Dare to Live in Freedom

Educational Based Marketing Tactics and Tips

2009-06-23T20:57:00.001+08:00

If you hadn’t heard of educational based marketing before, you’re not alone. I’ve met hundreds of salespeople who had no idea there was new side of marketing that they haven’t explored yet. Oddly enough, most of these people don’t realize they’re experiencing educational based marketing. Every time they read a newspaper article, watch a paid advertisement, or attend a seminar they’re being exposed.

By now you’re wondering what methods of educational based marketing are available. There are certainly plenty to choose from, but I have a few favorites.

I love writing and sending regular newsletters. I usually accumulate tons of new information and use my articles as a way to share some of the things I’ve learned. I also answer general questions from clients and prospects, giving my readers some real life perspective. The newsletters go out via email to my subscribers, and I carry paper copies to give to those I meet at lectures and business events.

Develop a series of free educational materials. For example, someone who has picked up your newsletter might be encouraged to call your office to request additional information (perhaps a report or DVD). At that point, you’ll gather their contact information which you can later use to either send more information or to follow up with promotional materials.

Record a video or telephone call. People generally enjoy either visuals or things they can listen to while completing other tasks. Record an engaging video to post on the internet, or create a captivating phone recording that a Sales person or Manager can listen to as they prepare to meet prospects or address meetings. Make your educational material short and to the point.

Write a newspaper article. Write an informative article on a current hot topic and submit it to your local newspaper or trade magazine. Sharing information that is currently important to people, such as how to deal with rising gas prices or the economy, it’s much more likely to get attention than something that isn’t already a major focal point. Find an angle that makes it easy to relate your business to the topics at hand.

Always offer as much information as possible before you attempt to make a sale. Often, your prospects will see your contact information and visit your website to do some research of their own. In the end, you’ll spend more time answering calls asking for your services and less time trying to sell yourself!

If you hadn’t heard of educational based marketing before, you’re not alone. I’ve met hundreds of salespeople who had no idea there was new side of marketing that they haven’t explored yet. Oddly enough, most of these people don’t realize they’re experiencing educational based marketing. Every time they read a newspaper article, watch a paid advertisement, or attend a seminar they’re being exposed.

Making Money Is Not Enough! Are You Building Your Online Assets?

2009-06-23T20:55:00.001+08:00

I've read from a Robert Kiyosaki book that those who are saving money are losing it. He goes on to say how those money should be invested in something like real estate, and the income from those would fund a business, and so on.

What he's really saying is that you shouldn't just put all your money in your bank, but you should invest it to earn more.

I was thinking how this is applicable to an online business. You might be focused on earning money in the present, but are you building your online assets that could give you passive (or at least easy) income in the future?

These online assets would include:

1) Your list of subscribers and customers. If you're not building a list, your online business is not on secure ground. By building your list and establishing good relationships with them, you could earn lots of instant money at the push of a button!

2) Your network (JV partners, affiliates, etc.) Talk with your JV partners from time to time about things other than business. It's easier to persuade them when you have established some sort of bond with them, other than only contacting them every time you need something.

Also, make it a habit to search for new partners to JV with. Promote for them first, and they'll be more likely to reciprocate.

3) Your personal web properties. This could be your own websites, domains you've bought, or anything else you have full control of.

4) Rent-free 3rd-party webspace. In the offline world, you need to pay rent for the office or store space. But in the online world, you could put your content permanently on 3rd-party websites... without paying a single dime!

You can put your content on content-sharing sites like squidoo, hubpages, qassia, wetpaint, google knol, etc. And of course, article directories like ezinearticles, goarticles, buzzle, etc.

You can put your videos in video-sharing sites like youtube, metacafe, revver, and a lot more!

The more content you create and post on 3rd party sites, the more passive income you stand to make!

What other online assets can you think of that are worthy of building?

You might be focused on earning money in the present, but are you building your online assets that could give you passive (or at least easy) income in the future?

Marketing Tip - 5 Fatal Networking Mistakes

2009-06-23T20:54:00.001+08:00

I could share tons of tips and tricks for effective offline networking, but none of them would do you any good if you walked into a networking situation and did something to instantly create a bad impression. Here are five common mistakes I’ve seen new entrepreneurs make time and time again. Don’t let these things prevent you from growing your business.

1. Unprofessional email addresses. The username you created in high school commemorating your best friend or first love may have been cute back then, but it’s incredibly inappropriate now. If you can’t bear to let it to, create a second email account that you can use for networking purposes. I am much more likely to contact someone with a real email address, such as one that uses their name, than I am to contact someone who uses a ridiculous name such as TooCool4MyShirt.

2. Dressing like you’re ready to work in the yard. I don’t care if you are currently unemployed or if you’re self employed and regularly enjoy a casual dress code. When you attend networking events you should be dressed in a business professional manner and act respectfully. You have no way of knowing who you are going to meet, and it would be terrible to meet someone who might really need your services only to have him walk away thinking you are a slob.

3. Forgetting your business cards. I repeat, carry business cards at all times. Why would you waste your time networking with someone, only to find you can’t give them your contact information at the end of your conversation? The only thing you will end up telling your prospective contact is that you are unprepared. I guarantee that if you end up writing your name and email address on the back of a receipt or napkin it will be thrown away – probably on purpose.

4. Not having a real goal or purpose. Do not attend a networking event, or any type of business function, if you have no idea why you are going. You can’t just “meet people.” Are you networking to find a job, a potential joint venture partner, or a mentor? Perhaps you are simply looking for form a network of contacts so that you can refer your clients to others with unique skills. Knowing your own goals will make holding a conversation much easier.

5. Inability to LISTEN. As a new entrepreneur in a networking situation, it would benefit you greatly to listen to the advice of those you meet. More experienced marketers will often share advice, and they’ll remember you if you are receptive and polite. I’ve attempted to help a few new marketers, but those who act like they already know everything don’t impress me at all and I usually toss their business cards in the trash bin on my way out the door. Those who show genuine interest in what I have to say, and in themselves, are the ones I’m more likely to help.

Networking with others can be a scary experience, especially if it’s not something you’re used to. Relax, breathe, and remember to act professionally and respectfully at all times. The rest will come together by itself.

I could share tons of tips and tricks for effective offline networking, but none of them would do you any good if you walked into a networking situation and did something to instantly create a bad impression.

Creative Marketing Ideas

2009-06-23T20:52:00.001+08:00

The following creative marketing ideas are specifically about finding new places and ways to advertise. This has always been an area ripe for new ideas. What prompted me to write this page is an article I recently read on a company called Show Media.

Show Media has advertising displays on top of 3,000 taxis in New York. They charge client (which include Levis, Nike and other big companies) $200 per month for each ad, and they pay $100 to the cab company. That leaves enough room for healthy profits. Founder Laurence Hallier says that a typical campaign, which would cost $40,000 per month for exposure on 200 taxis, is seen by 25% of the city's residents - each day.

That got me to thinking about what other creative marketing ideas and opportunities are out there in the area of advertising. The following is a short list I am coming up with as I write this. Some of these may already exist.

Street Signs - In these tough times, many cities are looking for additional revenue. Could placing advertising on street signs provide it? In addition to providing monthly revenue, the company that arranges this might have to make new signs for the city, saving it this cost.

Personal Car Ads - I know this is being done in some areas already. What is needed is a simple system. Have a place where a driver can pull in, have a sign attached to his or her car, and get a check for keeping it there for six months.

Kite Ads - In areas with consistent breezes it might be possible to have kites flying most of the day with large ads on them. Beaches are a natural location, but this may work in other places as well.

Sidewalk Audio Advertising - As people walk by certain locations an ad automatically plays. Advertisers could be charged by the number of times an ad plays (getting a good deal when more than one pedestrian happens to be there to hear it). Another angle here is to sell the units to specific businesses. A restaurant might have a recording that is triggered by each passer-by, saying something like, "Hello, come on in right now and you'll get a free drink with your sandwich."

Yard Sign Advertising - I'm not sure about the legality of this in most places, but many yards have signs supporting political candidates or announcing that some company just replaced the windows or did the landscaping, so why not have paid advertising? Residents get a monthly check for each sign, and advertisers pay twice that, leaving room for a profit for the company that does this.

Mural Advertising - This one might be an opportunity for a budding artist. He could find a building that is ugly and ask the owner how much he would want to have a nice advertising mural on it. Then he could find advertisers who will pay enough to leave him with a decent profit. The owner of the building might have to get final approval on the planned mural and agree to leave it there for a couple years.

Odor Advertising - Have the smell of fresh cooked food pumped onto busy sidewalks, alongside a sign or audio ad promoting a restaurant.

Advertising With Plants - Bushes could be trimmed into the shape of a company logo. Flower beds could be planted with logos or even in the shape of words for advertising. Cornfields near airports could have ads cut into them to be seen by plane passengers above.

Marketing Games - A company might get word-of-mouth advertising by making it into a contest or game. Participants sign up online and get a number which they give out with their recommendation. The person who has referred the most customers after a year wins a big prize.

DVD Ads - There is already advertising for other movies IN DVD movies, but what about on the box that the DVD comes in. I'm not referring to the one that it is sold in. Many movie rental stores have their own blank boxes that they send out all of their movies in. Could they sell advertising on those? It could be for local products or services (a restaurant, for example), or products available nationally.

Those are the ten creative marketing ideas that I could think of in the forty-five minutes it took to write this. You can probably add a few to the list with a bit of brainstorming.

A look at creative marketing ideas, specifically dealing with new ways to advertise.

How can one use a Blog for a business effectively?

2009-06-23T20:51:00.000+08:00

Is the ability of the blogs to drive growth and traffic still in tact?
Well, blogs have taken an all new evolved form. A number of astute Social Media marketers have continued to use Blogs for businesses effectively, as traffic drivers.
A Blog is an integral part of any online marketing mix. It continues to provide a cost-effective push to businesses across the globe. But in a changed economic and market scenario how does a blog still help?
1. For starters it reinforces the knowledge base and insight of the company, which specializes in a certain area of business. The fact that information can be twisted in favor of the company’s business makes an end user explore more before taking a decision.
2. Content, coming from a trusted authority on the subject has the ability to hook information hungry people. Your corporate brochure (read business website) is more like a Salesman. Your blog is like a Counselor.
3. A blog helps tremendously for Search Engine Optimization (thankfully nobody questioned this being effective!). With blogs, critical updates about a new product or service do not require you to disrupt the structure of your website.
4. Consider your Blog to be your second property on the Internet. More number of sites you have the more business you are able to generate online.
5. Readers and participants of the blog form a niche community within your territory. These communities benefit you in the long run. Social networks are no doubt good, but you don’t own these communities.
What are some of the basics that need to be kept in mind while developing one –
1. As a blog is like a counselor, you need to be more subtle in your expression of thoughts rather than highlighting the achievements of the company.
2. Preferably, use a sub domain for a blog i.e. www.blog.yourdomain.com . This will help from the SEO point of view for both the blog and your website.
3. Ensure your information is Keyword rich (Density to be between 3-5%). It will also help get more engagements of your potential customer.
4. A faceless / nameless corporate blog is useless. Impersonal lacks credibility.
5. Promote your blog effectively through social networks. Viral marketing take over after a while if the content is interesting.
6. Encourage people posting comments. The more participative the blog is the more effective a community it becomes.
7. Make sure you are regular to post information on your Blog. This encourages people to keep coming back for more. The effort has to be continuous. Start with at least one post a month and then the creative juices flow as often!

Have blogs come of age with its new avatar and subtle clever techniques? Here’s how a new generation of blogs powering businesses and helping chart growth…

Profile : Nelson Tansu Ph.D

2009-06-22T12:55:00.003+08:00

Nelson Tansu Picture Associate Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering

Ph.D. Electrical Engineering (Concentration: Applied Physics), University of Wisconsin-Madison, May 2003
B.S. Applied Mathematics, Electrical Engineering, and Physics (AMEP), University of Wisconsin-Madison, May 1998 (Curriculum Vitae)

Contact Information:
Nelson Tansu, Ph.D.
P.C. Rossin Associate Professor
Center for Optical Technologies
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science
Lehigh University
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania 18015, USA
Email: Tansu(at)lehigh(dot)EDU
Phone: (610) 758-2678, Fax: (610) 758-2605
Personal Web Page: http://www.ece.lehigh.edu/~tansu

Research Interests:
Physics and MOCVD of III-Nitride and III-V Semiconductor Optoelectronics Materials and Devices; III-Nitride and III-V Semiconductor Nanostructures for Solid State Lightings, Energy, and Communications; Photonics. Further description is available at the Research Group page (www.ece.lehigh.edu/~tansu)

Publications, Patents, and Invited Talks (as of June 2008):
Dr. Tansu has published widely in numerous refereed international journal and conference publications (total > 140) an d holds several US patents (total > 4 US patents and 4 invention disclosures), and he has also reviewed regularly for the leading journals in applied physics and optoelectronics areas.
He has also given numerous lectures, seminars, and invited talks (total > 32) in universities, research institutions, and conferences in USA, Canada, Europe, and Asia.
Total book chapters: > 6
Citations of journal papers: >520

Prof. Nelson Tansu PhD: Sebagai Bangsa Besar Indonesia Harus MengutamakanPendidikan Pendidikan

2009-06-22T12:50:00.001+08:00

Prestasi anak muda kelahiran Medan, 20 Oktober 1977 ini memang mengagumkan. Pada usia 25 tahun ia telah berhasil meraih gelar PhD di University of Wisconsin, Madison, dan kemudian menjadi profesor di universitas ternama Amerika, Lehigh University, Pensilvania. Bidang yang ditekuninya pun terbilang "berat" bagi telinga awam; semiconductor optoelectronics and semiconductor nanostructure devices. Sebuah bidang riset yang sangat diminati oleh negara-negara maju dan sangat bermanfaat bagi pengembangan teknologi komunikasi optik, sensor biokimia, sistem deteksi senjata, dll.

Kiprah Tansu di bidang ini bukan main seriusnya. Untuk bidang yang digeluti itu, ilmuwan muda ini sudah menerima 11 penghargaan, memiliki tiga hak paten atas penemuan risetnya, dan tak kurang dari 84 hasil riset maupun karya tulisnya dipublikasikan di berbagai konferensi dan jurnal ilmiah. Puluhan surat pujian dan penghargaan dia terima dari berbagai universitas ternama dari segala penjuru dunia. Ini bukti eksistensinya sebagai ilmuwan sejati, yang sangat berdidikasi pada riset dan pengajaran di bidang yang ditekuninya.

Nelson mengaku memilih universitas luar negeri sebagai wadah kiprah ilmiahnya karena semata-mata iklim keilmuan di sana sangat kondusif. Peran dan keberadaan para ilmuwan sangat dihargai dan dihormati di sana. Selain itu, fasilitas riset yang sangat dia butuhkan juga menunjang komitmennya untuk mengembangkan ilmu pengetahuan dan teknologi yang bermanfaat bagi negara dan dunia.

Di tengah-tengah kesibukannya mengajar dan melakukan penelitian-penelitian, Tansu masih bersedia menyempatkan diri diwawancarai oleh Edy Zaqeus dari Pembelajar.com. Dalam jawaban-jawabannya melalui email, Tansu menegaskan bahwa salah satu agenda terpenting yang harus diperhatikan bangsa Indonesia sekarang adalah membenahi dunia pendidikan. Jika ingin menjadi bangsa yang besar dan menjadi terang bagi dunia, maka pendidikan terbaik bagi generasi muda adalah kunci jawaban satu-satunya. Berikut petikan wawancara yang dilakukan pada 29 Desember 2004 lalu:

Bagaimana rasanya menjadi profesor di saat usia muda dan di universitas ternama lagi?

Saya merasa berterima kasih atas kesempatan untuk dapat menjadi profesor di Lehigh University di USA. Tentu saja saya sendiri tidak akan dapat mencapai segala ini tanpa dukungan dari keluarga di Indonesia, dan di Amerika juga. Dan juga bimbingan dari guru-guru, para profesor dari pendidikan dasar dan menengah di Indonesia sampai universitas di Amerika. Saya rasa saya masih harus banyak bekerja dan belajar segiat mungkin untuk bisa terus. Pertama, menghasilkan kontribusi ilmiah penting dalam bidang fisika dan engineering. Kedua, berinovasi untuk menghasilkan science and engineering yang memiliki applikasi dalam bidang teknologi. Ketiga, mampu untuk memberikan pengajaran (lecture) yang paling efektif kepada mahasiswa-mahasiswa saya. Dan keempat, mampu mendidik dan menghasilkan ilmuwan dan profesor-profesor masa depan juga.

Jadi seperti yang saya katakan, masih banyak hal-hal yang saya harus lakukan dan semua ini cuma bisa dicapai dengan kerja keras. Kalau soal filosofi sebagai professor di universitas: saya sangat mementingkan excellence in both research and teaching. Saya sendiri berusaha untuk memberikan yang terbaik untuk para mahasiswa dan juga universitas, dan hopefully juga negara.

Dalam bahasa awam, sebenarnya apa manfaat dari ilmu dan riset yang Anda geluti saat ini?

Bidang research yang saya dalami adalah semiconductor optoelectronics and semiconductor nanostructure devices, di mana saya melakukan riset baik dalam bidang experimental dan theoretically juga. Teknologi yang saya kembangkan di sini mencakup semiconductor lasers, quantum well dan quantum dot lasers, quantum intersubband lasers, InGaAsN quantum well dan quantum dots, type-II quantum well lasers, dan GaN/AlGaN/InGaN semiconductor nanostructure optoelectronic devices. Dengan menggunakan metalorganic chemical vapor deposition untuk mengontrol atom-atom di semiconductor, kita dapat melakukan bandgap engineering dari semiconductor tersebut. Penggunaan teknologi yang kita lakukan mencakup aplikasi di bidang optical communication, biochemical sensors, system deteksi untuk senjata, dan lainnya.

Ada pandangan bahwa mutu sekolah di tanah air berantakan. Anda sendiri produk dari pendidikan dasar di tanah air, tetapi toh bisa berprestasi seperti sekarang. Pendapat anda?

Saya sendiri orangnya sangat optimis. Jadi saya rasa sebenarnya bukan sistem yang menjadi masalah bagi bangsa kita untuk maju dalam bidang pendidikan. Sebenarnya banyak ilmuwan-ilmuwan Indonesia yang sukses di tingkat dunia, di Amerika Serikat dan negara maju lainnya, yang sangat dapat dibanggakan, yang dulunya juga memperoleh pendidikan dasar (dari SD sampai SMA) di Indonesia yang kita cintai ini. Kesuksesan mereka tersebar dalam bidang-bidang pendidikan, teknologi, riset, penemuan, engineering, science, dan lainnya. Beberapa contoh adalah sebagai berikut: Prof. Yohanes Surya, Prof. Ken Soetanto (professor di Waseda University, Jepang), Prof. B. J. Habibie, dan lain sebagainya. Mereka semua dulunya juga memperoleh pendidikan dasar di Indonesia.

Sebenarnya, menurut pendapat saya, saya kira sistem pendidikan dasar di Indonesia (dari SD sampai SMA) sewaktu saya masih sekolah di Indonesia sudah cukup bagus. Tetapi mungkin dalam pelaksanaan di sekolah-sekolahnya yang kurang. Siswa-siswa yang memperoleh pendidikan mereka di sekolah-sekolah top di Indonesia akan dengan mudah mendapatkan pendidikan dasar terbaik yang sebanding atau dan tidak kalah dari pendidikan di sekolah-sekolah top di Singapura, Jepang, USA, dan negara maju lainnya. Jadi ibaratnya, sistem pendidikan dasar sebenarnya tidak kalah dari negara maju lainnya. Tetapi pelaksanaan di lapangannya mungkin masih sangat sulit untuk bisa optimal. Hal ini mungkin disebabkan oleh sulitnya menyediakan guru-guru berbobot untuk mengajar di daerah-daerah. Dan juga soal dana yang terbatas. Salah satu hal yang penting untuk di-emphasize dalam kultur bangsa Indonesia adalah kita sebagai bangsa besar dengan populasi no.4 di dunia, harusnya berani menjadi bangsa yang mengutamakan pendidikan untuk generasi mendatang.

Masyarakat kita sering merasa rendah diri dengan kualitas pendidikan di negeri sendiri. Bagaimana pandangan anda?

Saya rasa bangsa Indonesia tidak perlu merasa 'rendah diri' mengenai pendidikan dasar dalam negeri. Seperti saya katakan tadi, pendidikan yang diberikan oleh sekolah-sekolah (SMA) top Indonesia sama sekali tidak kalah dengan sekolah top di negara maju. Menurut pandangan saya, saya sendiri sangat berterima kasih atas pendidikan dasar yang saya peroleh dari SD-SMA Sutomo 1 Medan, yang mana bukan hanya memberikan fondasi kuat dalam hal pengetahuan, tetapi juga soal etika hidup. Bangsa kita harus menyadari bahwa yang paling penting adalah bagaimana mengimplementasikan pendidikan dengan benar. Bukan hanya memiliki sistem yang bagus tetapi tidak dilaksanakan.

Mungkin untuk level universitas, harus diakui universitas-universitas di Indonesia masih perlu bekerja keras untuk mengejar ketertinggalan mereka dibandingkan dengan universitas-universitas top di Asia, Eropa, dan Amerika Serikat.

Menurut Anda, mana yang lebih berperan dalam suksesnya pendidikan, keuletan dan kreatifitas anak didiknya atau kurikulum dan kemampuan guru-gurunya? Saya rasa kultur dan motivasi dari pendidik atau guru dan anak-anak didik kita (siswa dan mahasiswa) yang jauh lebih penting daripada sistem pendidikan. Tentu saja kemampuan guru di Indonesia masih jauh di bawah harapan, kalau dibandingkan dengan negara maju. Sebenarnya kurikulum Indonesia tidaklah kalah dari kurikulum di negara maju, tetapi seperti saya katakan tadi, mungkin pelaksanaannya yang masih jauh dari optimal.

Mengenai kultur dan motivasi dari murid-murid Indonesia, saya rasa masih dapat dikembangkan lebih jauh. Bangsa Indonesia haruslah meyakini bahwa bagi kita, untuk menjadi bangsa besar di dunia ini, maka pendidikan adalah cara untuk mencapainya. Yang harus anak-anak muda kita idolakan janganlah melulu bintang film, penyanyi-penyanyi, atau olahragawan saja. Tetapi idolakan juga orang-orang yang sukses di bidang pendidikan dan science-teknologi.

Anda bisa ceritakan, bagaimana proses pembentukan kultur belajar di negara-negara yang maju pendidikannya?

Di kalangan masyarakat negara maju, pendidik, guru atau profesor, sangatlah dihormati. Mungkin hal ini disebabkan karena rasa sadar diri yang tinggi dari masyarakat negara maju mengenai betapa pentingnya pendidik dalam membentuk generasi mendatang. Jangan lupa juga, hampir semua penemuan penting yang menempatkan negara maju (seperti Amerika Serikat) berasal dari riset yang dilakukan oleh mahasiswa dan profesor-profesor di universitas.

Jadi di negara maju, pemerintah dan masyarakat sangat mendukung keberadaan universitas-universitas. Oleh karena itu, universitas-universitas top di Amerika Serikat selalu mendapatkan banyak sumbangan finansial dari alumni-alumni yang totalnya bisa mencapai lebih dari beberapa milyar dollar AS. Contohnya: Sumbangan alumni di Lehigh University jumlahnya lebih dari 1 milyar dollar AS! Dan semua investasi sumbangan dari alumni untuk universitas di Amerika Serikat ini akan disalurkan kembali untuk mengembangkan dan memajukan kualitas universitas bersangkutan. Misalnya dengan cara merekrut dan meng-hire profesor-profesor berkualitas tinggi, membangun fasilitas-fasilitas muktakhir untuk riset dan teaching, memberikan scholarships untuk mahasiswa-mahasiswa terbaik, dan tentunya untuk berkompetisi dengan universitas lainnya.

Kalau pembentukan kultur belajar di Indonesia?

Mungkin bukan kultur belajar siswa-siswa Indonesia yang menyebabkan problematika pendidikan di Indonesia, tetapi kultur dari masyarakat Indonesia secara keseluruhan. Masyarakat Indonesia harus menyadari bahwa investasi yang dilakukan oleh bangsa Indonesia dalam bidang pendidikan akan menunjukkan hasil di kemudian hari, yaitu generasi mendatang yang bakal membangun negara Indonesia menjadi yang lebih baik.

Saat ini, dunia pendidikan di Indonesia dipandang dalam lingkup lingkaran setan. Yang selalu dipermasalahkan adalah gonta-gantinya kebijakan pemerintah, kurikulum bongkar pasang, kualitas pendidik dianggap rendah, gaji dan kesejahteraan guru sangat jelek, minimnya fasilitas riset, dll. Pandangan Anda?

Saya setuju sekali dengan pernyataan Anda mengenai beberapa hal yang menyulitkan Indonesia dalam mengembangkan dunia pendidikan. Sangat disayangkan bahwa dunia pendidikan Indonesia terlalu tergantung pada kondisi politiknya. Saya ingat sewaktu saya masih mengenyam pendidikan dasar di SMA Sutomo 1 Medan atau sewaktu SD sampai SMA, saya rasa pendidikan dasar yang saya peroleh tersebut sangatlah berkualitas dan tidaklah kalah dengan pendidikan dasar di negara maju lainnya. Tetapi sekarang sistem pendidikan di Indonesia telah berubah terus, sampai beberapa versi sejak saya tamat SMA tahun 1995 lalu. Saya rasa kurikulum-kurikulum tersebut, baik sewaktu zaman saya, atau sekarang semuanya baik. Tetapi pelaksanaanya yang perlu dilakukan dengan seoptimal mungkin.

Jadi sebenarnya kita jangan terus menerus ganti kurikulum hanya karena adanya pemerintah baru. Sistem evalusi seperti Ebtanas yang diganti dengan UAN menjadikan tambahan confusion (kerancuan) dalam perbandingan antar siswa dari generasi yang berbeda. Jadi sistem dan kurikulum jangan diubah-ubah terlalu drastis, tetapi tentu saja boleh diperbaiki secara perlahan-lahan, dan yang penting pelaksanaannya yang harus dimaksimalkan.

Tentu saja kualitas pendidik yang rendah, terutama di daerah terpencil, jauh dari kota besar menyebabkan sulitnya mencapai pemerataan dan peningkatan kualitas pendidikan secara menyeluruh di Tanah Air. Saya kira pendidikan yang diperoleh di kota-kota besar sudah cukup baik, tetapi hal ini sulit dicapai oleh daerah-daerah terpencil.

Kualitas fasilitas riset yang masih jauh dari optimal dan kesulitan mendapatkan profesor terbaik untuk datang mengajar di universitas-universitas Indonesia juga menghambat perkembangan Indonesia untuk memiliki universitas terkenal di tingkat Asia dan dunia. Kita misalnya harus melihat komposisi profesor-profesor yang dimiliki National University of Singapore, yang merupakan salah satu universitas berkualitas tinggi di tingkat Asia, di mana profesor-profesornya berasal dari manca negara. Jadi kita harus merefleksikan diri, bagaimana kita bisa meng-attract 'foreign talent' untuk berkontribus bagi pengembangan generasi muda kita. Sekarang ini, sangatlah susah untuk menarik profesor-profesor terbaik di Amerika Serikat untuk menjadi profesor di Indonesia.

Hal prinsip apa saja yang mesti dilakukan untuk membenahi pendidikan di Indonesia?

Bangsa Indonesia harus mampu memiliki universitas-universitas berkualitas terbaik (top 10 or top 5) di tingkat Asia. Hal ini merupakan tujuan yang tidak dapat dihindari jika Indonesia ingin menjadi salah satu macan pendidikan di tingkat Asia. Dengan adanya universitas-universitas top 5 dan top 10 di tingkat Asia, maka sumber daya manusia (SDM) terbaik Indonesia dapat berkarya di dalam negeri dan juga SDM terbaik dari luar negeri dapat ditarik untuk berkontribusi dalam meningkatkan kualitas generasi muda mendatang.

Saya kira Indonesia harus berkonsentrasi untuk mengembangkan tiga universitas top-nya, misalnya UI, ITB, dan UGM, dengan berkonsentrasi bagaimana supaya tiga universitas tersebut dapat menjadi universitas terbaik di tingkat Asia. Salah satunya adalah menunjuk administrator universitas (rektor, dekan, dan ketua departemen) yang bermotivasi dan mampu membawa universitas tersebut ke tingkat Asia. Mungkin yang terbaik adalah mendapatkan administrator ini dari kalangan profesor-profesor dari universitas luar negeri yang telah memiliki banyak pengalaman dalam hal operasi universitas-universitas berkualitas tinggi. Dengan adanya rektor dan dekan yang berkualitas tinggi, maka secara otomatis kultur positif bakal ditularkan kepada seluruh komponen di universitas.

Hanya sebagian kecil dari masyarakat kita yang masih yakin bahwa Indonesia memiliki potensi human capital yang luar biasa. Menurut Anda? Oh tentu saja, Indonesia mempunyai potensi SDM yang besar. Ingat, negara kita ini adalah negara no.4 terbesar dalam hal populasi. Bayangkan jika kita mampu mendidik manusia-manusia muda Indonesia dalam beberapa generasi mendatang dengan sebaik-baiknya, maka bangsa Indonesia akan mempunyai potensi untuk menjadi salah satu negara maju di dunia. Saya kira manusia Indonesia tidaklah kalah dalam hal otak dibandingkan dengan manusia-manusia dari bangsa lainnya. Tetapi karena fasilitas yang kurang di Indonesia, maka seluruh komponen bangsa kita haruslah bekerja lebih keras dan serius untuk mengejar ketertinggalan ini.

Sekarang soal mahasiswa. Sebagian besar mahasiswa kita masih larut dalam eforia reformasi. Tiada hari tanpa demonstrasi. Adakah hal yang menurut Anda lebih strategis untuk mereka kerjakan?

Saya sendiri adalah seseorang yang berkecimpung dalam bidang pendidikan tinggi, science, dan teknologi, jadi saya bukanlah ahli dalam bidang politik. Tetapi saya memiliki opini sendiri mengenai peranan siswa dan mahasiswa dalam hal politik. Di masa chaos di negara mana pun, mahasiswa selalu terlibat dalam hal politik, yaitu dengan berdemonstrasi, sama seperti di Amerika Serikat tahun 1960-an. Sebenarnya hal ini adalah sangat disayangkan (karena disebabkan kondisi yang chaos). Sebab, mahasiswa sebenarnya haruslah berkonsentrasi dalam meningkatkan pengetahuan, mengembangkan kreafitas mereka, dan juga berusaha untuk menyumbangkan pengetahuan mereka dalam bidang expertise mereka. Tetapi sekali lagi, mungkin kondisi politik yang kurang mendukunglah yang mendorong mereka untuk berdemonstrasi.

Tentu saja ini opini pribadi saya. Mahasiswa haruslah berkonsentrasi di kampus sebagai mahasiswa yang serius dengan kegiatan akademik dan kegiatan lainnya yang mendukung pendidikan mereka (seperti riset, pendidikan tinggi, dan lainnya). Sama sekali bukan dengan aktivitas politik. Mungkin dengan kondisi politik yang sekarang yang jauh lebih baik di Indonesia, mahasiswa Indonesia dapat memberikan perhatian penuh dalam kelas lagi.

Anda percaya, nasib Indonesia ke depan ada di tangan anak-anak muda ini? Tentu saja, nasib bangsa Indonesia di masa depan berada di tangan anak-anak muda sekarang. Kalau tidak, memangnya bangsa kita harus tergantung dengan siapa? Tentu saja, anak-anak muda sekarang ini haruslah diberikan contoh-contoh, cara-cara, dan kesempatan-kesempatan untuk mampu menjadi maju dan berhasil. Jawabannya sebenarnya tentu cuma satu, yaitu pendidikan yang terbaik untuk generasi sekarang dan mendatang!

Anda bangga menjadi manusia Indonesia?

Tentu saja, saya sangat bangga menjadi manusia Indonesia. Saya sendiri lahir, besar, dan mendapatkan pendidikan dasar di Indonesia. Saya sendiri sangat kecewa dengan orang-orang Indonesia yang telah sukses di negara lain, dan lupa kepada bangsa aslinya. Setiap negara tentu saja memiliki kekurangan-kekurangan tertentu, termasuk Indonesia. Dan kita-kita ini sebagai manusia Indonesia haruslah berusaha untuk memperbaiki Indonesia dengan cara yang benar dan konstruktif, bukan hanya dengan menjelek-jelekkan, tetapi kita harus mampu memberikan ide untuk maju dan memperbaiki.

Tolong gambarkan? dalam visi Anda, seperti apakah Indonesia 20 tahun mendatang?

Generasi muda dari Indonesia mendatang diharapkan bisa mempunyai keinginan untuk menjadi manusia yang berguna bagi bangsa dan negara Indonesia, dan juga semua manusia di dunia. Di kemudian hari, bangsa Indonesia haruslah memikirkan bagaimana bisa menjadi terang bagai lilin bagi seluruh bangsa-bangsa di dunia, bukan hanya negara sendiri. Pikirkan bagaimana supaya generasi muda Indonesia bisa menjadikan Indonesia sebagai bangsa yang bisa dibanggakan oleh seluruh bangsa di dunia.

Pesan dan harapan Anda terhadap dunia pendidikan Indonesia maupun pada kalangan muda kita?

Salah satu hal yang saya harapkan dari artikel wawancara ini. Ini bukanlah tentang saya, melainkan tentang harapan supaya bangsa Indonesia tahu bahwa kita adalah bangsa yang besar. Kita merupakan bangsa yang mampu bersaing dengan bangsa-bangsa besar lainnya, jika bangsa kita mau bekerja keras. Putra-putri Indonesia haruslah sadar, hanya dengan kerja keras dan komitmen yang tinggi saja, kita sebagai bangsa Indonesia bisa maju dan bersaing di tingkat dunia.

Satu hal yang paling penting untuk seluruh bangsa Indonesia. Pendidikan tinggi di Indonesia haruslah diperbaiki sehingga kualitas universitas-universitas Indonesia bisa menjadi yang salah satu yang terbaik di tingkat Asia, hopefully top 5-10 Asia. Di sejumlah daerah atau kota-kota besar, pendidikan pra universitas di Indonesia sudah cukup bagus. Walau begitu, tetap harus ditingkatkan kualitasnya dengan pemerataan dan pengembangan pendidikan di luar kota-kota besar. We, as Indonesian, have to have the highest standard with respect to our attitudes and views on education and nurturing the future of our nation. It is time that we treat education and the future generation as the most important priorities of our country.

Saya selalu merasa, yang terpenting adalah kita harus menaruh ambisi, tujuan atau cita-cita kita yang setinggi-tingginya dan bekerja keras. Tentu saja dengan tidak melupakan akhlak dan kejujuran untuk mencapainya. Mereka yang berhasil adalah yang bekerja dan belajar keras, sangat fokus dengan tujuan, gigih, kreatif, self motivated, etis, jujur, bersikap positif, aktif dalam bertanya dan mencari jawaban. Dan yang terpenting, selalu mencintai dan menikmati apa yang dilakukannya. Manusia pintar yang tidak jujur dan tidak beretika bukanlah tujuan dari pendidikan.

Saya juga ingin menyaksikan semakin banyak orang Indonesia yang bisa datang ke AS untuk memperoleh PhD mereka, sehingga mereka bisa ikut andil dalam mengembangkan Indonesia di kemudian hari, baik dari luar maupun dari dalam negeri. Sebab, untuk membantu perkembangan di Indonesia, tidak perlu semua orang berada di Indonesia. Bisa juga dari luar negeri. Indonesia juga harus bisa melihat contoh dari berbagai negara lainnya yang jauh lebih kecil tetapi sukses seperti Taiwan dan Singapura, di mana sangat banyak yang menjadi professor dan ilmuwan sukses di AS. Untuk menjadi bangsa yang maju sekali, bngsa kita harus bisa bersaing dengan yang terbaik di dunia, bukan hanya di Indonesia.

Saya berharap Indonesia sebagai negara nomor 4 terbesar di dunia haruslah mempunyai universitas yang bagus, yang semoga akan menjadi salah satu universitas top di Asia (top 5 or 10). It is time for us to make education in Indonesia as the very first priority in every children's goal! *

*Informasi lengkap mengenai curriculum vitae dan hasil-hasil riset Nelson Tansu dapat dilihat di: http://www3.lehigh.edu/engineering/ece/tansu.asp Beberapa majalah yang mendeskripsikan risetnya dapat dilihat di website berikut:

1. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/12/031217073811.htm
2. http://www.innovations-report.com/html/reports/physics_astronomy/report-24251.html
3. http://www3.lehigh.edu/engineering/news/tansureceivespatent.asp

Kiprah Nelson Tansu, Anak Medan yang Jadi Profesor Termuda Amerika

2009-06-22T12:34:00.002+08:00

source : JAWA POS
Bantu 10 Anak Tidak Mampu Raih Gelar Doktor

Tahun lalu Nelson Tansu kehilangan ayah-ibunya akibat perampokan di kampungnya, Medan, Sumatera Utara. Meski kecewa dengan penyidikan kasus orangtuanya, profesor termuda itu tetap setia berpaspor Indonesia.

NELSON Tansu -profesor Universitas Lehigh di Amerika- menjadi salah satu bintang di forum Asian Science Camp (ASC) 2008 yang kini diadakan di Inna Grand Bali Beach, Sanur, Bali. Terutama bagi puluhan pemenang olimpiade sains Indonesia yang menjadi peserta acara di sana. Maklum, saat duduk di SMA di Medan dulu, Tansu adalah finalis Tim Olimpiade Fisika Indonesia.

Tampil rapi dengan kemeja biru muda dipadu jas hitam, Tansu lebih mengesankan sebagai pebisnis muda. Terutama ketika berada di antara para profesor, termasuk para peraih Nobel, yang menjadi pembicara di ASC yang umumnya sudah tua. Saat ditemui Jawa Pos kemarin, gurat kelelahan terlihat di wajahnya karena dia mengisi acara sejak pagi. Namun, dia tetap bersemangat untuk masuk kelas dan mengikuti sesi berikutnya.

''Wait for a second (Tunggu sebentar),'' ujarnya. Meski asli warga negara Indonesia (WNI), Tansu lebih senang menggunakan bahasa Inggris. ''Saya sekarang lebih banyak tinggal di Amerika. Tapi, masih sering mengunjungi Indonesia,'' jelas pria kelahiran 20 Oktober 1977 itu.

Tansu, lulusan terbaik SMU Sutomo 1 Medan 1995, adalah sosok yang patut dibanggakan. Saat usianya baru 25 tahun dia diangkat menjadi profesor di Lehigh University, sebuah universitas ternama di Negara Bagian Pennsylvania, Amerika.

''Persaingan mendapatkan posisi sebagai profesor di Amerika memang sangat ketat. Setiap satu lowongan, lebih dari 350 orang yang mendaftar,'' katanya.

Sukses Tansu menjadi pengajar di Lehigh University dan dinobatkan sebagai profesor termuda di Amerika itu berkat didikan orang tua. Sebab, sejak kecil sang ayah, Iskandar Tansu, memompa semangat untuk meraih prestasi tertinggi.

Berkat gemblengan keras sang ayah, Tansu sejak kecil sering memenangi berbagai lomba dan kejuaraan. "Ayah saya seorang pekerja keras. Saya juga terbiasa melakukannya sejak muda hingga menjadi profesor seperti sekarang,'' ungkapnya.

Kecuali spirit kerja keras, Tansu mengakui, sebetulnya tidak ada yang spesial dari pendidikan yang diberikan orang tuanya. Dia bermain dan belajar seperti kebanyakan anak-anak lain. "Bimbingan keluarga, orang tua, guru, dan sekolah itu penting, tapi yang lebih penting adalah usaha kita,'' jelasnya.

Menurut Tansu, dirinya sering harus tidur larut malam untuk menyelesaikan tugas. Namun, dia mengaku tidak keberatan, karena menyukai apa yang dilakukannya. ''Yang terpenting, lakukan hal yang paling kamu sukai sehingga kamu pasti berhasil di dalamnya. Tentu saja ditambah dengan usaha yang keras,'' katanya.

Sukses Tansu menjadi profesor di Lehigh University bukan kebetulan. Dunia sudah mengakui karya-karya ilmiahnya. Saat ini lebih dari 138 riset dan karya tulis yang telah dipublikasikan. Selain itu, dia menjadi pembicara aktif di berbagai seminar tentang sains dan pendidikan di seluruh dunia.

Meski berasal dari Indonesia dan masih mencintai negaranya, Tansu mengaku tidak punya rencana untuk menghabiskan masa tua di tanah air. ''Saya tidak punya rencana sejauh itu. Toh, 20 tahun lagi kita adalah citizen of the world, orang akan bebas tinggal di mana pun,'' kata laki-laki yang baru tahun lalu mempersunting Adela Gozali Yose, gadis Medan, menjadi istrinya itu.

Sayang, tahun lalu (2007) pula Tansu mengalami masa yang kelam dalam sejarah hidupnya. Rumahnya dirampok dan ayah ibunya, Iskandar Tansu dan Auw Lie Min, dibunuh. ''Saat penyelidikan, kita mengalami masalah dengan penegak hukumnya,'' ujarnya.

Modus perampokan dan pembunuhan itu memang sadis sehingga dua pelakunya divonis mati. Tansu tidak bersedia mengenang dan berbicara lebih lanjut tentang peristiwa traumatik yang menimpa dia dan dua saudaranya yang lain. Namun, pengalaman itu tidak mematikan rasa cintanya kepada Indonesia.

''Semua kenangan tetang masa kecil dan orang tua saya ada di sini. Saya tentu tidak bisa melupakan Indonesia,'' kata doktor electrical engineering University of Wisconsin di Madison, Amerika, itu.

Sebagai bukti kecintaannya kepada Indonesia, Tansu kini menggalang dana untuk menyekolahkan anak tidak mampu tapi pandai yang ingin memperoleh gelar doktor (PhD). ''Untuk mendapatkan gelar tersebut kan susah, butuh banyak biaya untuk riset dan penelitian,'' ujarnya.

Saat ini, lanjutnya, di antara 10 orang yang dibantunya, dua orang dari Indonesia. Dia berharap pada tahun-tahun yang akan datang lebih banyak lagi orang Indonesianya. "Di Amerika banyak yang mau memberikan bantuan dana untuk pendidikan dan saya bisa mencarikannya dengan mudah,'' jelasnya.

Menurut Tansu, kegiatannya itu bukan semata karena peduli terhadap bangsa Indonesia, tapi juga karena kepeduliannya kepada pendidikan. "Sejak kecil saya ingin jadi pendidik di bidang sains dan engineering, sayangnya posisi ini di Indonesia kurang dihargai,'' kata pengajar S-3 itu.

Dia tak setuju guru cuma dianggap sebagai pahlawan tanpa tanda jasa karena guru butuh uang makan. Gaji guru dan dosen yang rendah itulah yang menjadi salah satu penyebab banyak orang pintar yang lari ke luar negeri.

''Inilah yang menjadikan mutu pendidikan kita rendah. Guru-guru dengan gaji dan fasilitas pas-pasan tentunya tidak bisa memberikan pelayanan optimal karena harus mencari tambahan sampingan,'' jelasnya.

Tansu mengharapkan pemerintah segera mengubah kebijakannya agar mutu pendidikan di Indonesia meningkat. ''Jika ada profesor yang kembali ke Indonesia ditawari jadi dosen atau anggota dewan, maka jawabannya pasti yang terakhir, it's the reality,'' jelasnya.

Selain itu, menurut pemikiran Tansu, Indonesia seharusnya mempunyai satu universitas yang bisa menjadi kebanggaan. ''Jika ada satu saja universitas di Indonesia yang setara dengan di AS, maka anak-anak kita yang pandai tidak akan lari ke luar negeri. Mereka akan memilih kuliah di negaranya sendiri,'' ujarnya.

Tansu mengenang, akibat tak adanya perguruan tinggi kebanggaan itu, ayahnya, Iskandar Tansu, mendorong semua anaknya sekolah ke Amerika. Selain dia, abangnya, Tony Tansu, adalah master dari Ohio, Amerika. Begitu juga adiknya, Inge Tansu, adalah lulusan Ohio State University (OSU). Kedua saudaranya itu tinggal di Indonesia.

Important Things for Happiness

2009-06-18T13:11:00.004+08:00

Remember 5 Important things below for Happiness :

1. Free your heart from hated.

2. Free your mind from worries.

3. Live simply.

4. Give more.

5. Expect less.

No one can go back and make a brand new start.

Anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending.

God didn't promise days without pain, laughter without sorrow, sun without

rain, but He did promise strength for the day, comfort for the tears, and light for the way.

Disappointments are like road humps, they slow you down a bit but you

Enjoy the smooth road afterwards.

Don't stay on the humps too long. Move on!

When you feel down because you didn't get what you want, just sit tight and

be happy, because God is thinking of something better to give you.

When something happens to you, good or bad, consider what it means

There's a purpose to life's events, to teach you how to laugh more or

Not to cry too hard.

You can't make someone love you, all you can do is be someone who can

Be loved, the rest is up to the person to realise your worth.

The measure of love is when you love without measure.

In life there are very rare chances that you'll meet the person you

Love and loves you in return.

So once you have it don't ever let go, the chance might never come your way again.

It's better to lose your pride to the one you love, than to lose the

One you love because of pride.

We spend too much time looking for the right person to love or finding fault with those

we already love, when instead we should be perfecting the love we give.

When you truly care for someone, you don't look for faults, you don't

Look for answers, you don't look for mistakes.

Instead, you fight the mistakes, you accept the faults, and you

Overlook the excuses.

Never abandon an old friend you will never find one who can take his place

Friendship is like wine, it gets better as it grows older.

How to Go From Introvert to Extrovert

2009-06-04T08:39:00.001+08:00

by Steve Pavlina
As a child I was very introverted, often spending my time on the computer, reading, playing video games, or pursuing other solo hobbies. I’d spend time outdoors biking, exploring the nearby fields and hills (which today are filled with houses), or shooting hoops, but I’d usually favor doing these things alone or with people I knew very well. I never felt too comfortable around strangers, and I never cared for big family events. Psychological tests like the Myers-Briggs pegged me squarely as an introvert. Anyone who knew me would have described me as an introvert without a second thought.

Like many introverts I was pressured by others to socialize more. But I largely resisted this pressure, partly because I enjoyed being an introvert. I often viewed extroverts as lacking in intelligence and depth, and I can’t say I wanted to count myself among them.

However, over a long period of time, I eventually found myself becoming more and more extroverted. I embraced spending time with other people, went out of my way to meet new people, could comfortably introduce myself to strangers, and actually enjoyed it. The Myers-Briggs test now labels me an extrovert. To the people who know me today, this wouldn’t be surprising.

I’m not the kind of extrovert I envisioned as a child though. I feel I’ve done a good job balancing the introvert and extrovert parts of myself, such that I enjoy both types of activities equally. I feel just as comfortable staying at home reading a book as I do going to a new social event and introducing myself to people I’ve never met. I enjoy both group and solo activities, each for different reasons. Some weeks I’m far more introverted and mostly stay home with my family. Other weeks I have a full social calendar with an event almost every night. I enjoy both just as much.

In order to become an extrovert, I found that I had to overcome several blocks to being more extroverted. Chances are that if you’re in the same boat, you have some of these blocks as well.

Blocks to becoming an extrovert

* Undervaluing extroversion. Spending time alone and with people are equally important. If you’re very introverted, you may undervalue the positive role people can play in your life, such as knowledge, friendship, growth, laughter, and so on. The optimal outcome is to strike a balance between the two. You don’t have to give up the introvert activities you enjoy. In fact, when you balance them with more social activities, you’ll probably find them even more satisfying. After several nights of being around people, I really look forward to a night by myself to read, meditate, write, etc. And after lots of time alone or with my family, I’m itching to go out and be around other people.
* Underdeveloped social skills. Social skills can be learned like any other skill set. One reason introverts shy away from social activities is that they don’t feel comfortable because they don’t know what to do, especially if the unexpected were to occur. Being able to start up a conversation with a stranger AND feel completely comfortable doing it is a learnable skill. The more you do it, the better you get at it. Embrace the fact that you’re a beginner, and don’t compare yourself to others.
* Envisioning yourself as the wrong kind of extrovert. If you find the extroverted people around you shallow and perhaps even annoying, why would you want to be more like them? You wouldn’t. When I was a kid, I really didn’t want to be more like the extroverts I knew. Even as an adult, my vision of an extrovert was an in-your-face salesperson who only wanted to build a shallow relationship with you so they could sell you something. It seemed very fake and phony to me. And of course that vision prevented me from ever wanting to be like that. But you needn’t choose such a limited vision for yourself — you’re free to form your own vision of a positive way to be more extroverted.
* Hanging out with the wrong people. Why would you want to spend more time with people you don’t like? If becoming more extroverted means spending more time with people you’d rather avoid, you’ll have no motivation to do it. Again, you’re free to break this pattern and form a social group that you’d love to be a part of.
* Overvaluing online socializing. Online socializing has its place in your life, but it’s a pale shadow compared to face-to-face, belly-to-belly communication. Voice and body language can communicate a lot more than text, and emotional bonds are easier and faster to establish in person. I feel much closer to the local friends I’ve known for only a few months than I do to the people I’ve known online for years but never met in person. It’s just not as fun going out to dinner with a laptop. You don’t have to do away with online socializing, but don’t allow it to crowd out meeting people locally. If you do that, you’ll only cause your interpersonal skills to lag further behind.

If you have some of these blocks and want to get past them, the first step is to acknowledge them and consider how they’re holding you back. Then begin to work on them just as you would any other challenge in your life. Focus your intentions, set goals, make plans, and start taking action. It may be awkward and clumsy at first, but just accept that, and get moving anyway.

Suggestions for becoming more extroverted

Here are some additional suggestions for how to become more extroverted:

* Envision the type of extrovert you’d like to be. What’s your ideal outcome? If you feel too introverted and want to be more extroverted, start by working on your vision of your outcome. Chances are that if you’ve been making little progress in this area, you have a somewhat negative vision of extroverts. When I formed a positive vision of being an extrovert that included building genuine relationships with intelligent people I respect (as opposed to random, shallow socializing), I soon began attracting those relationships. Being a “dumb jock” kind of extrovert still has no appeal to me.
* Think of relationships in terms of what you can give, not in terms of what you can get. If you seek to build new relationships based on mutual giving and receiving, you’ll have no shortage of friends. Identify people with whom you’d like to build a relationship, and start by giving. I’ve found that my geeky knowledge is actually a tremendous strength when it comes to socializing because there are an awful lot of non-geeks who’d like to understand geeky stuff better, and I can explain it to them in ways they’ll understand. For example, I’ve been teaching some local speaker friends about blogging and web marketing, and in return I’m learning a lot from them about speaking, humor, etc. There are many intelligent people out there who’d love to have a geek as a friend. What can you bring to a relationship that will be of benefit to someone else? When you figure out what that is (and it’s probably many different things), you’ll have an easier time attracting new friends into your life.
* Find the right social group for you. Consciously consider the types of people you’d want to have as friends. There’s no rule that says this has to be your peers or co-workers. I actually find myself more interested in making friends with people who are much older than me as opposed to people my own age or slightly younger. People around my age (34) tend to be very career- and family-oriented, but often in a somewhat mindless, socially conditioned way that isn’t centered around any consciously chosen life purpose or belief system. And people in their 20s, while often highly energetic, tend to be largely unfocused… or focused on trivial pursuits that just aren’t that important. So it’s been difficult for me to find people near my age where we have enough in common for a long-term friendship. I seem to have an easier time making friends with people in their 40s, 50, and older. They typically have greater knowledge and experience, more fascinating stories to share, more resources (information and ideas, financial resources, contacts), and a better sense of who they are and what they want to do with their lives. Often I find myself attending social events where I’m the youngest person in the room, but that feels very comfortable and normal for me. Don’t be afraid to stretch beyond the most obvious peer group and hang out with people from different ages, neighborhoods, cultures, countries, etc. You might find the variety to be a lot of fun.
* Play from your strengths. It’s interesting that many introverts have no trouble socializing online. In that environment they’re able to play from their strengths. But you can also use your strengths consciously as leverage to branch out into more face-to-face socializing. For example, after I graduated college, I met a woman on a local BBS (before there was much of a World Wide Web). We got to chatting online over a period of weeks. Eventually we met in person and became friends, and I soon fell into her pre-existing social group through osmosis. My social calendar went from empty to full almost overnight. That woman, by the way, has been my wife for the past 7.5 years. If you socialize online, see if you can’t use that strength to build new local relationships. While people have done this in global forums like online games, I think it’s easier to try it in local forums. For instance, there are message boards for people who’ve recently moved to Las Vegas.
* Join a club. It’s old advice, but it still works. The advantage is that you’ll find people who share similar interests, which makes it easier to build new relationships. One good club can fill your social calendar. For example, through my membership in Toastmasters, I get invitations to lots of other local social events. I don’t go to everything, but it’s nice to get those invites. Plus belonging to an international organization with 200,000 members worldwide creates social inroads around the planet. If you join a club and find that it’s not right for you, quit and join something else. My wife and I have both been through a number of local social groups that just didn’t resonate with us (too boring, too slow, too disorganized, too many alcoholics). But one good group is all you need.
* Develop your social skills consciously. You can learn to become better at building rapport, introducing yourself, keeping a conversation going, asking someone out on a date, feeling socially comfortable instead of nervous, and so on. You don’t need to be shallow and manipulative about it, but genuinely build these skills because it will greatly enhance your life. One approach I find extremely effective is to ask the other person how s/he got started in his/her current line of work. 80-90% of the time the person will say something like, “Well, that’s an interesting story….” And I genuinely like hearing these stories. A small basic set of social skills can go a long way because you’ll get to reuse them every time you meet someone. Whatever skill you’d like to develop, try doing a Google or Amazon search on it, and you’ll probably find plenty of articles and books.

Risk vs. Reward in Human Relationships

2009-06-04T08:37:00.000+08:00

by Steve Pavlina
In the previous post, we identified some fears that hold people back from taking more social risks, including the fear of others forming a negative opinion of you and the fear of hurting others through social interaction with them, fears that would be eliminated if you were dealing only with computer-generated characters in a simulation instead of real-life human beings.

I think these points are valid to a degree. You would incur less social risk with a simulation as opposed to real humans.

But consider an alternative viewpoint…

You cannot do much to help simulated characters grow or contribute to their lives in a meaningful way (at least not with today’s simulations). But you can have this kind of positive impact with real human beings.

What would happen if instead of focusing on the fear of negative consequences from social interaction, you focused on the anticipation of positive consequences, such as forming new friendships, helping people grow, making people laugh, falling in love, etc.?

Would you not then be even more eager to socially interact with real human beings and less so with simulated ones? Would you rather hear “I love you” from a simulation or a real human being?

If it’s not real, then you take less social risk, but you also gain less reward. Dealing with real humans increases both the potential risk and the potential reward. Your actual behavior will be largely determined by which side you predominantly focus on — minimizing the downside or maximizing the upside.

When it comes to real-life human relationships, what’s the biggest risk in the long run? Is it the risk of committing social mistakes that may lead to embarrassment and hurt feelings? Or is it the risk of holding back and doing nothing, missing out on some potentially rewarding long-term relationships?

As I see it, a bit of occasional embarrassment is a small price to pay for the rich rewards of meaningful human relationships. Our imaginations can transform these fears into fire-breathing dragons, but in reality these fears are little more than puny imps guarding a massive treasure, easily defeated once you finally decide to face them down.

When I get involved in new social interactions, whether meeting new people, doing public speaking, or even blogging on topics such as these, I always run the risk of making a fool of myself. But I also have to consider the potential rewards of changing people’s lives, forming new friendships, and spreading ideas… not to mention all the long-term ripples that flow forth from those effects. And to me that possibility makes the risk very much worth taking because the potential upside is so much greater than the potential downside. As a practical matter, the worst realistic downside is a bruised ego or a damaged reputation. I’m OK with that though. Making a fool of myself now and then helps me not to take myself too seriously and to laugh at my own foibles. But I’m not OK knowing that someone I could have helped is living a life far below their potential because I sat on the sidelines and did nothing. To me that is too big a risk.

So recognize the (perhaps even greater) risk you take by avoiding social interaction — the laughs you never shared, the people you never helped, the potential spouse you sentenced to solitude…. That’s quite a price to pay simply to avoid a little (usually harmless) embarrassment.

Intelligent Risk Taking

2009-06-04T08:34:00.000+08:00

by Steve Pavlina
Risk taking is an integral part of business and life, but so few people know how to manage it properly. The word risk has a slightly negative connotation to it — it implies danger, tension, and possible loss. But risk also has a positive side, the chance of hitting a big win, of getting more on the back side than you invest on the front side.

All risks are not equal, however. Some risks are just plain dumb, and you should never take them. But even in those cases, there’s usually some emotional benefit. My city of Las Vegas thrives on such benefits. I don’t even have to pay state taxes because the 30+ million tourists who come here each year pay them for me (Nevada has no state tax). In fact, I got a $75 refund last year for taxes I never paid because the state had a $300 million surplus. I actually got paid by the state just for living here. Gamblers provide about half the state’s revenue. All those risk takers help pay our bills. I rather like that.

But what about intelligent risks? Those are obviously the ones where the upside outweighs the downside, at least probability-wise. You won’t find too many of those risks in casinos.

Now we all know it’s generally a bad idea to take dumb risks, where your expected outcome is negative and the potential upside is very limited. But guess what… It’s equally stupid to pass up an intelligent risk, where your expected outcome is positive and the potential downside is very limited.

This is a concept I learned from Jay Abraham. I had to hear it many times before it really sunk in, but when it finally did sink in, it completely transformed my thinking about risk taking.

The most intelligent risks are those where the potential downside is limited, but the potential upside is virtually unlimited. Those are the risks you should jump to take.

For example, consider the optimization work I do on this web site. Suppose I take an hour to review my stats and make some tweaks to the ad layout. There’s a risk that my income could go down because I’ve made a mistake. But if it’s a big mistake, I’ll catch it within a matter of days (perhaps hours) and correct it. I can always restore the layout to its previous “good” state, so any decline is temporary. If it’s a small mistake, I may not catch it until I review the stats again a month later. But I’ll still detect and correct the problem, and if the problem is too small to detect, its effect on the results is negligible anyway.

My worst-case downside risk for optimization work is that I’ll waste about an hour of my time, I’ll lose a little bit of money, and I’ll learn something new.

But what’s the best case outcome? The best case is huge. I might stumble upon a new layout that permanently boosts income. And in that case my only investment was an hour of my time.

And the actual result of doing optimization work over the past year is that this year, it’s going to amount to tens of thousands of extra dollars vs. if I’d never done any testing and tweaking at all. In the long run, what I’ve done already will produce enough gain to pay for my house. And in total it was maybe 20 hours of work over the course of a year. But what if I’d never risked those 20 hours and the possibility that I might temporarily mess up my income? Methinks 20 hours for a house is a pretty good deal. The house is probably worth about $350K today.

This is the kind of risk I’d be a fool not to take. The downside is limited and fixed, but the potential upside is wide open. What kind of total and complete idiot would I have to be not to be willing to trade 20 hours of my time for a house?

This planet has enough total and complete idiots. Please don’t be one of them. You will lose a lot more by missing big opportunities like this than you ever will from making mistakes.

Here are some other examples of intelligent risk taking:

* Ask someone out on a date (worst case downside = one-time embarrassing rejection, best case upside = lifelong relationship with your soulmate)
* Ask for a raise or promotion (worst case downside = boss says no, best case upside = permanent raise or promotion)
* Start a blog (worst case downside = waste some of your time, best case upside = change your life and the world for the better)
* Join a new club (worst case downside = waste some of your time and quit, best case upside = lifelong friendships plus a lot of other benefits)
* Take a cooking class (worst case downside = waste a little time and money, best case upside = become a permanently better chef)

Are you one of those people that mentally catastrophized my worst case downsides? Like instead of a “one-time embarrassing rejection” for a date request, you thought about a stalker or a painful divorce? If so, maybe it’s time to turn off the TV and hang out with more positive people.

Most of us are pretty good at avoiding dumb risks, unless you happen to be reading this from a jail cell. But we’re exceptionally lousy at taking intelligent risks. The stupidest mistakes we make are errors of omission.

One of the reasons I’m so gung ho about personal development is that I see such pursuits as a very intelligent risk-taking. I might waste a lot of time reading bad books, listening to lousy audio programs, and going to lame seminars, but every once in a while, I hit a huge breakthrough that leaves me permanently changed. Most of the books, audio programs, and seminars I devour are indeed a waste of time. Maybe I get a temporary rah rah boost from them, but usually they’re forgotten soon afterwards. However, those few gems that help me create permanent change make the entire pursuit worthwhile. These gems, however, are different for everyone. One person’s lump of coal is another person’s diamond. So even personal recommendations don’t help that much. It’s like a game of chance, but in the long run, the odds of success are in your favor. This machine has a long-term payout greater than 100%.

The key to intelligent risk-taking is to look far enough ahead. When thinking about personal growth, I don’t just think a year ahead or five years ahead. I think across the span of my whole lifetime (sometimes even thinking beyond the grave… seriously). I ask myself, “What difference might this make over the span of the next several decades?” Over that timespan even small changes you might make today can create huge long-term payoffs. And the decision to do nothing today means you’re automatically denying yourself any long-term benefits. Doing nothing isn’t neutral. Doing nothing is way, way negative.

This is one of the reasons it’s so important to install good habits. In the short-term, it’s a struggle, often a painful one. We have to deal with disappointment again and again. We fall flat on our faces, dust ourselves off, and throw ourselves into the ring anew, only to be pummeled once again. And we use that same tired mantra, “This time it will be different!” — a mantra that fails 19 times out of 20.

What keeps me from getting discouraged when my failures outnumber my successes is to keep thinking long-term. I often must endure a lot of failures to hit the next big breakthrough. So I just plow through those failures as fast as possible. It’s like a conveyor belt — there’s a new success on that belt somewhere ahead, and the faster the belt moves, the sooner it will arrive.

It’s amazing how much long-term difference just a small change you make today can make. Just a little more self-discipline, a little more courage, a little more persistence, a little more enthusiasm — these can produce huge gains in the long run.

Take a look at the second graph from yesterday’s blog post on my 2005 traffic and Adsense revenue growth. That was my income from this web site. Notice how flat it is during the first four months. This is the point where most people give up. Personal growth is often flat in the beginning. The gains are there, but they’re just too small to see.

Do NOT give up during the flat period!

The flat period is the hardest because you’re working hard and getting very little to show for it. Maybe you keep working on your social skills but can’t seem to get a date to save your life. Maybe you keep working on your internet skills but still can’t figure out how to make your own web site. Maybe you start a new business and just can’t seem to get anything going.

That’s life. Give yourself permission to work hard and have little to show for it, as long as you intelligently hold a positive long-term outlook.

I’ve been working hard on this business for 15–1/2 months now, but it still generates less income for me than what I could get if I went out and got a job working as a computer programmer. There’ve been a lot of people in my life who didn’t understand my long-term thinking. I’m sure many of my decisions look really dumb if you only project a month or a year ahead. I’ve seen more than one person write about me, “Steve is either really smart or really dumb.” The reality is simply that I have a very long time perspective. Later this year I’ll be doing some things that I guarantee will look incredibly stupid from a traditional business perspective, but when I consider what those seeds will likely produce over the next several decades, the outlook is simply amazing.

I have to deal with the same negative criticism and lack of support that everyone else does. It amuses me that one of my extended family members still wanted me to go out and get a job last year, since she felt it would make me more money in the short term. I basically write her off as clueless — it’s not hard to do this when I look at her lifelong results from pursuing the strategy of short-term thinking and fear of risk taking.

Short-term thinking and risk aversion dominate this planet. A person like me who embraces intelligent risk and thinks decades ahead doesn’t fit in very well here. That was a bit of a problem for me when I was younger, but now I just embrace it. It’s simply who I am. I get all the support I need from my connection to my purpose and from feeling a sense that I’m working to serve the highest good of all. The whole world could turn against me, and it wouldn’t make me want to give up. It would probably just inflame me more. I never get discouraged because I believe my approach to life will produce some amazing results in the long run. It’s only a matter of time.

Love is more powerful than fear. I overcome fear of risk by tapping ever more deeply into what I love most. The thought of taking a risk produces excitement instead of anxiety.

Find an intelligent risk you can take today. Most likely it won’t pan out. But what if it does? Celebrate either way because no matter what the outcome, you’ll gain courage just by making the attempt.

Risk versus uncertainty

2009-06-04T08:32:00.000+08:00

In his seminal work Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit, Frank Knight (1921) established the distinction between risk and uncertainty.
“ ... Uncertainty must be taken in a sense radically distinct from the familiar notion of Risk, from which it has never been properly separated. The term "risk," as loosely used in everyday speech and in economic discussion, really covers two things which, functionally at least, in their causal relations to the phenomena of economic organization, are categorically different. ... The essential fact is that "risk" means in some cases a quantity susceptible of measurement, while at other times it is something distinctly not of this character; and there are far-reaching and crucial differences in the bearings of the phenomenon depending on which of the two is really present and operating. ... It will appear that a measurable uncertainty, or "risk" proper, as we shall use the term, is so far different from an unmeasurable one that it is not in effect an uncertainty at all. We ... accordingly restrict the term "uncertainty" to cases of the non-quantitive type. ”

A solution to this ambiguity is proposed in How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of Intangibles in Business and The Failure of Risk Management: Why It's Broken and How to Fix It by Doug Hubbard:

Uncertainty: The lack of complete certainty, that is, the existence of more than one possibility. The "true" outcome/state/result/value is not known.

Measurement of uncertainty: A set of probabilities assigned to a set of possibilities. Example: "There is a 60% chance this market will double in five years"

Risk: A state of uncertainty where some of the possibilities involve a loss, catastrophe, or other undesirable outcome.

Measurement of risk: A set of possibilities each with quantified probabilities and quantified losses. Example: "There is a 40% chance the proposed oil well will be dry with a loss of $12 million in exploratory drilling costs".

In this sense, Hubbard uses the terms so that one may have uncertainty without risk but not risk without uncertainty. We can be uncertain about the winner of a contest, but unless we have some personal stake in it, we have no risk. If we bet money on the outcome of the contest, then we have a risk. In both cases there are more than one outcome. The measure of uncertainty refers only to the probabilities assigned to outcomes, while the measure of risk requires both probabilities for outcomes and losses quantified for outcomes.

Definitions of risk

2009-06-04T08:26:00.001+08:00

There are many definitions of risk that vary by specific application and situational context. The widely inconsistent and ambiguous use of the word is one of several current criticisms of the methods to manage risk. One is that risk is an issue, which can be avoided or mitigated (wherein an issue is a potential problem that has to be fixed now.) Risk is described both qualitatively and quantitatively. In some texts risk is described as a situation which would lead to negative consequences.

Qualitatively, risk is proportional to both the expected losses which may be caused by an event and to the probability of this event. Greater loss and greater event likelihood result in a greater overall risk.

Frequently in the subject matter literature, risk is defined in pseudo-formal forms where the components of the definition are vague and ill-defined, for example, risk is considered as an indicator of threat, or depends on threats, vulnerability, impact and uncertainty.[citation needed]

In engineering, the definition risk often simply is:

{Risk} = {probability of an accident}) x {losses per accident}),

Or in more general terms:

{Risk} = {probability of event occurring}) x {impact of event occuring},

One of the first major uses of this concept was at the planning of the Delta Works in 1953, a flood protection program in the Netherlands, with the aid of the mathematician David van Dantzig. The kind of risk analysis pioneered here has become common today in fields like nuclear power, aerospace and chemical industry.

There are more sophisticated definitions, however. Measuring engineering risk is often difficult, especially in potentially dangerous industries such as nuclear energy. Often, the probability of a negative event is estimated by using the frequency of past similar events or by event-tree methods, but probabilities for rare failures may be difficult to estimate if an event tree cannot be formulated. Methods to calculate the cost of the loss of human life vary depending on the purpose of the calculation. Specific methods include what people are willing to pay to insure against death, and radiological release (e.g., GBq of radio-iodine).[citation needed] There are many formal methods used to assess or to "measure" risk, considered as one of the critical indicators important for human decision making.

Financial risk is often defined as the unexpected variability or volatility of returns and thus includes both potential worse-than-expected as well as better-than-expected returns. References to negative risk below should be read as applying to positive impacts or opportunity (e.g., for "loss" read "loss or gain") unless the context precludes.

In statistics, risk is often mapped to the probability of some event which is seen as undesirable. Usually, the probability of that event and some assessment of its expected harm must be combined into a believable scenario (an outcome), which combines the set of risk, regret and reward probabilities into an expected value for that outcome. (See also Expected utility.)

Thus, in statistical decision theory, the risk function of an estimator δ(x) for a parameter θ, calculated from some observables x, is defined as the expectation value of the loss function L,

R(\theta,\delta(x)) = \int L(\theta,\delta(x)) f(x|\theta)\,dx

In information security[citation needed], a risk is written as an asset, the threats to the asset and the vulnerability that can be exploited by the threats to impact the asset - an example being: Our desktop computers (asset) can be compromised by malware (threat) entering the environment as an email attachment (vulnerability).

The risk is then assessed as a function of three variables:

1. the probability that there is a threat
2. the probability that there are any vulnerabilities
3. the potential impact to the business.

The two probabilities are sometimes combined and are also known as likelihood. If any of these variables approaches zero, the overall risk approaches zero.

The management of actuarial risk is called risk management.

Risk

2009-06-04T08:24:00.000+08:00

Risk is a concept that denotes the precise probability of specific eventualities. Technically, the notion of risk is independent from the notion of value and, as such, eventualities may have both beneficial and adverse consequences. However, in general usage the convention is to focus only on potential negative impact to some characteristic of value that may arise from a future event.

RISK can be defined as “the threat or probability that an action or event, will adversely or beneficially affect an organisation's ability to achieve its objectives. In simple terms risk is ‘Uncertainty of Outcome’, either from pursuing a future positive opportunity, or an existing negative threat in trying to achieve a current objective.

What is Arrogance

2009-06-01T18:57:00.001+08:00

By Baron Max Aitken Beaverbrook

What is arrogance? To begin with, it is the besetting sin of young men who have begun to prosper by their own exertions in the affairs of the world. It is not pride, which is a more or less just estimate of one's own power and responsibilities. It is not vanity or conceit, which consists in pluming oneself exactly on the qualities one does not possess. Arrogance is in essence something of far tougher fibre than conceit. It is the sense of ability and power run riot; the feeling that the world is an oyster, and that in opening its rough edges there is no need to care a jot for the interests or susceptibilities of others.

A young man who has surmounted his education, gone out into the world on his own account, and made some progress in business, is the ready prey of the bacillus of arrogance. He does not yet know enough of life to realise the price he will have to pay in the future for the brusqueness of his manner or the abruptness of his proceedings. He may even fancy that it is only necessary to be as rude as Napoleon to acquire all the gifts of the Emperor. This conception is altogether false, though it may be pardoned to youth in the first rush of success.

The unfortunate point is that in everyday life the older men will not in practice confer this pardon. They are annoyed by the presumption the newcomer displays, and they visit their wrath on him, not only at the time of the offence, but for years afterwards.

At the moment this attitude of criticism and hostility the masters of the field show to the aspirant may not be without its advantages if it teaches him that justice, moderation, and courtesy are qualities which still possess merits even for the rising young man. If so, we may thank Heaven even for our enemies.

The usual prophecy for curbing arrogant youth on these occasions is the sure prediction that he will come a smash. As a matter of fact, it is extraordinarily rare for a man who has conquered the initial difficulties of success in money-making, if his work is honest, to come to disaster. None the less, if the young man hears these "ancestral voices prophesying war," and shivers a little in his bed at night, he will be none the worse for the cold douche of doubt and enmity.

Indeed, so long as youth keeps its head it will be the better for the successive hurdles which obstructive age, or even middle-age, puts in its path. A few stumbles will teach it care in approaching the next jump.

The only real cure for arrogance is a check - not an absolute failure. For complete disaster is as likely to breed the arrogance of despair as supreme triumph is to breed the arrogance of invincibility. A set-back is the best cure for arrogance.

It would be a false assumption to suppose that temporary humiliations or mistakes can rid one definitely and finally of the vice I am describing. Arrogance seems too closely knit into the very fibre of early success. The firsthand experience of youth is not sufficient to effect the cure - and it may be that no years and no experience will purge the mind of this natural tendency. When Pitt publicly announced at twenty-three that he would never take anything less than Cabinet rank he was undoubtedly arrogant. He became Premier at twenty-four. But age and experience moderated his supreme haughtiness, leaving at the end a residue of pure self-confidence which enabled him to bear up against blow after blow in the effort to save the State.

Arrogance, tempered by experience and defeat, may thus produce in the end the most effective type of character. But it seems a pity that youth should suffer so much in the aftermath while it learns the necessary lessons. But will youth listen to the advice of middle-age?

For every man youth tramples on in the arrogance of his successful career a hundred enemies will spring up to dog with an implacable dislike the middle of his life. A fault of manner, a deal pressed too hard in equity, the abruptness by which the old gods are tumbled out to make room for the new - all these are treasured up against the successful newcomer. In the very heat of the strife men take no more reckon of these things than of a flesh wound in the middle of a hand-to-hand battle. It is the after recollection on the part of the vanquished that breeds the sullen resentment rankling against the arrogance of the conqueror. Years afterwards, when all these things seem to have passed away, and the very recollection of them is dim in the mind of the young man, he will suddenly be struck by an unlooked-for blow dealt from a strange or even a friendly quarter. He will stagger, as though hit from behind with a stone, and exclaim, "Why did this man hit me suddenly from the dark?" Then searching back in the chamber of his mind he will remember some long past act of arrogance - conceived of at the time merely as an exertion of legitimate power and ability - and he will realise that he is paying in maturity for the indiscretions of his youth.

He may be engaged in some scheme for the benefit of a people or a nation in which there is not the faintest trace of self-interest. He may even be anxious to keep the peace with all men in the pursuit of his aim. But he may yet be compelled to look with sorrow on the wreck of his idea and pay the default for the antagonisms of his youth. It is not, perhaps, in the nature of youth to be prudent. The game seems everything; the penalties either nil or remote. But if prudence was ever vital in the early years, it is in the avoidance of those unnecessary enmities which arrogance brings in its train.

It might be supposed that middle-age was preaching to youth on a sin it had outlived. That is not the case. Unfortunately, arrogance is not confined to any period of life. But in early age it is a tendency at once most easy to forgive and to cure. Carried into later years, with no perception of the fault, it becomes incurable. Worse than that, it usually turns its possessor into a mixture of bore and fool.

Wrapped up in the mantle of his own self-esteem, the sufferer fails to catch the drift of sentiment round him, or to put himself in touch with the opinions of others. His chair in any room is soon surrounded by vacant seats or by patient sufferers. The vice has, in fact, turned inwards, and corroded the mentality. Far better the enemies and the mistakes of youth than this final assault on the fortress of inner calm and happiness within the mind.

The arrogant man can neither be friends with others nor, what is worse still, be friends with himself. The intense concentration on self which the mental habit brings not only disturbs any rational judgment of the values of the outer world, but poisons all sanity, calm, and happiness at the very source of being. It is hard to shed arrogance. It is more difficult to be humble. It is worth while to make the attempt.

Education = Success??

2009-06-01T18:45:00.002+08:00

By Baron Max Aitken Beaverbrook

A great number of letters have reached me from young men who seem to think that the road to success is barred to them owing to defects in their education. To them I would send this message:

Never believe that success cannot come your way because you have not been educated in the orthodox and regular fashion.

The nineteenth century made a god of education, and its eminent men placed learning as the foremost influence in life.

I am bold enough to dissent, if by education is meant a course of study imposed from without. Indeed, such a course may be a hindrance rather than a help to a man entering on a business career. No young man on the verge of life ought to be in the least discouraged by the fact that he is not stamped with the hall mark of Oxford or Cambridge.

Possibly, indeed, he has escaped a grave danger; for if, in the impressionable period of youth, attention is given to one kind of knowledge, it may very likely be withdrawn from another. A life of sheltered study does not allow a boy to learn the hard facts of the world - and business is concerned with reality. The truth is that education is the fruit of temperament, not success the fruit of education. What a man draws into himself by his own natural volition is what counts, because it becomes a living part of himself. I will make one exception in my own case - the Shorter Catechism, which was acquired by compulsion and yet remains with me.

My own education was of a most rudimentary description. It will be difficult for the modern English mind to grasp the parish of Newcastle, New Brunswick, in the 'eighties - sparse patches of cultivation surrounded by the virgin forest and broken by the rush of an immense river. For half the year the land is in the iron grip of snow and frost, and the Miramichi is frozen right down to its estuary - so that "the rain is turned to a white dust, and the sea to a great green stone."

It was the seasons which decided my compulsory education. In the winter I attended school because it was warm inside, and in the summer I spent my time in the woods because it was warm outside.

Perhaps the most remarkable instance of what self-education can do is to be found in the achievements of Mr. J. L. Garvin. He received no formal education at all in the public school or university sense, and he began to work for his living at an early age. Yet, not only is he, perhaps, the most eminent of living journalists, but his knowledge of books is, if not more profound than that of any other man in England, certainly wider in range, for it is not limited to any country or language. By his own unaided efforts he has gained not only knowledge, but style and judgment. To listen to his talk on literature is not merely to yield oneself to the spell of the magician, but to feel that the critic has got his estimate of values right.

Reading, indeed, is the real source both of education and of style. Read what you like, not what somebody else tells you that you ought to like. That reading alone is valuable which becomes part of the reader's own mind and nature, and this can never be the case if the matter is not the result of self-selection, but forced on the student from outside.

Read anything and read everything - just as a man with a sound digestion and a good appetite eats largely and indifferently of all that is set before him. The process of selection and rejection, or, in other words, of taste, will come best and naturally to any man who has the right kind of brains in his head. Some books he will throw away; others he will read over and over again. My education owes much to Scott and Stevenson, stealthily removed from my father's library and read in the hayloft when I should have been in school.

As a partiality for the right kind of literature grows on a man he is unconsciously forming his mind and his taste and his style, and by a natural impulse and no forced growth the whole world of letters is his.

There are, of course, in addition, certain special branches of education needing teaching which are of particular value to the business life.

Foremost among these are mathematics and foreign languages. It is not suggested that a knowledge of the higher mathematics is essential to a successful career; none the less it is true that the type of mind which takes readily to mathematics is the kind which succeeds in the realm of industry and finance.

One of the things I regret is that my business career was shaped on a continent which speaks one single language for commercial purposes from the Arctic Circle to the Gulf of Mexico. Foreign languages are, therefore, a sealed book to me. But if a man can properly appraise the value of something he does not possess, I would place a knowledge of languages high in the list of acquirements making for success.

But when all is said and done, the real education is the market-place of the street. There the study of character enables the boy of judgment to develop an unholy proficiency in estimating the value of the currency of the realm.

Experiences teaches that no man ought to be downcast in setting out on the adventure of life by a lack of formal knowledge. The Lord Chancellor asked me the other day where I was going to educate one of my sons. When I replied that I had not thought about the matter, and did not care, he was unable to repress his horror.

And yet the real reasons for such indifference are deep rooted in my mind. A boy is master, and the only master, of his fortune. If he wants to succeed in literature, he will read the classics until he obtains by what he draws into himself that kind of instinct which enables him to distinguish between good work and bad, just as the expert with his eyes shut knows the difference between a good and a bad cigar. Neither may be able to give any reason, for the verdict bases on subconscious knowledge, but each will be right when he says, "Here I have written well," or "Here I have smoked badly."

The message, therefore, is one of encouragement to the young men of England who are determined to succeed in the affairs of the world, and yet have not been through the mill. The public schools turn out a type - the individual turns out himself. In the hour of action it is probable that the individual will defeat the type. Nothing is of advantage in style except reading for oneself. Nothing is of advantage in the art of learning to know a good cigar but the actual practice of smoking. Nothing is of advantage in business except going in young, liking the game, and buying one's experience.

In a word, man is the creator and not the sport of his fate. He can triumph over his upbringing and, what is more, over himself.

Money = Success???

2009-06-01T18:37:00.000+08:00

by William Maxwell "Max" Aitken

Many serious letters and a half-humorous criticism in Punch suggest that I am to be regarded as the apostle of a pure materialism. That is not so. I quite recognise the existence of other ambitions in the walks of Art, Religion, or Literature. But at the very outset I confined the scope of my advice to those who wish to triumph in practical affairs. I am talking to the young men who want to succeed in business and to build up a new nation. Criticism based on any other conception of my purpose is a spent shaft.

Money - the word has a magical sound. It conjures up before the vision some kind of enchanted paradise where to wish is to have - Aladdin's lamp brought down to earth.

Yet in reality money carries with it only two qualities of value: the character it creates in the making; the self-expression of the individuality in the use of it, when once it has been made. The art of making money implies all those qualities - resolution, concentration, economy, self-control - which make for success and happiness. The power of using it makes a man who has become the captain of his own soul in the process of its acquirement also the master of the circumstances which surround him. He can shape his immediate world to his own liking. Apart from these two faculties, character in acquirement, power in use, money has little value, and is just as likely to be a curse as a blessing. For this reason the money master will care little for leaving vast wealth to his descendants. He knows that they would be better men for going down stripped into the struggle, with no inheritance but that of brains and character. Wealth without either the wish, the brains, or the power to use it is too often the medium through which men pamper the flesh with good living, and the mind with inanity, until death, operating through the liver, hurries the fortunate youth into an early grave. The inheritance tax should have no terrors for the millionaire.

The value of money is, therefore, first in the striving for it and then in the use of it. The ambition itself is a fine one - but how is it to be achieved?

I would lay down certain definite rules for the guidance of the young man who, starting with small things, is determined to go on to great ones:

1. The first key which opens the door of success is the trading instinct, the knowledge and sense of the real value of any article. Without it a man need not trouble to enter business at all, but if he possesses it even in a rudimentary form he can cultivate it in the early days when the mind is still plastic, until it develops beyond all recognition. When I was a boy I knew the value in exchange of every marble in my village, and this practice of valuing became a subconscious habit until, so long as I remained in business, I always had an intuitive perception of the real and not the face value of any article.

The young man who will walk through life developing the capacity for determining values, and then correcting his judgments by his information, is the man who will succeed in business.

2. But supposing that a young man has acquired this sense of values, he may yet ruin himself before he comes to the fruition of his talent if he will not practise economy. By economy I mean the economic conduct of his business. Examine your profit and loss account before you go out to conquer the financial world, and then go out for conquest - if the account justifies the enterprise. Too many men spend their time in laying down "pipe-lines" for future profits which may not arrive or only arrive for some newcomer who has taken over the business. There is nothing like sticking to one line of business until you have mastered it. A man who has learned how to conduct a single industry at a profit has conquered the obstacles which stand in the way of success in the larger world of enterprise.

3. Do not try to cut with too wide a swath. This last rule is the most important of all. Many promising young men have fallen into ruin from the neglect of this simple principle. It is so easy for premature ambition to launch men out into daring schemes for which they have neither the resources nor the experience. Acquire the knowledge of values, practise economy, and learn to read the minds of men, and your technique will then be perfected and ready for use on wider fields. The instinct for values, the habit of economy, the technique of business, are only three forms of the supreme quality of that judgment which is success.

For these reasons it is the first £10,000 which counts. There is the real struggle, the test of character, and the warranty of success. Youth and strength are given us to use in that first struggle, and a man must feel those early deals right down to the pit of his stomach if he is going to be a great man of business. They must shake the very fibre of his being as the conception of a great picture shakes an artist. But the first ten thousand made, he can advance with greater freedom and take affairs in his stride. He will have the confidence of experience, and can paint with a big brush because all the details of affairs are now familiar to his mentality. With this assured technique nothing will check the career. "Why," says the innkeeper in an adaptation from Bernard Shaw's sketch of Napoleon in Italy, "conquering countries is like folding a tablecloth. Once the first fold is made, the rest is easy. Conquer one, conquer all."

Such in effect is the career of the great captains of industry. Yet the man who attains, by the practice of these rules, a great fortune, may fail of real achievement and happiness. He may not be able to recognise that the qualities of the aspirant are not exactly the qualities of the man who has arrived. The sense of general responsibility must supersede the spirit of private adventure.

The stability of credit becomes the watchword of high finance. Thus the great money master will not believe that periods of depression are of necessity ruinous. It is true that no great profits will be made in such years of depression. But the lean years will not last for ever. Industry during the period of deflation goes through a process like that of an over-fat man taking a Turkish bath. The extravagances are eliminated, new invention and energy spring up to meet the call of necessity, and when the boom years come again it finds industry, like a highly trained athlete, ready to pour out the goods and pay the wages. Economic methods are nurtured by depression.

But when all has been said and done, the sceptic may still question us. Is the capacity to make money something to be desired and striven for, something worth having in the character, some proof of ability in the mind? The answer is "Yes."

Money which is striven for brings with it the real qualities in life. Here are the counters which mark character and brains. The money brain is, in the modern world, the supreme brain. Why? Because that which the greatest number of men strive for will produce the fiercest competition of intellect. Politics are for the few; they are a game, a fancy, or an inheritance. Leaving out the man of genius who flares out, perhaps, once or twice in a century, the amount of ability which enables a man to cut a very respectable figure in a Cabinet is extraordinarily low, compared with that demanded in the world of industry and finance. The politician will never believe this, but it is so.

The battles of the market-place are real duels, on which realities of life and death and fortune or poverty and even of fame depend. Here men fight with a precipice behind them, not a pension of £2,000 a year. The young men who go down into that press must win their spurs by no man's favour. But youth can triumph; it has the resolution when the mind is still plastic to gain that judgment which experience gives.

My advice to the young men of to-day is simply this: Money is nothing but the fruit of resolution and intellect applied to the affairs of the world. To an unshakable resolution fortune will oppose no bar.

William Maxwell "Max" Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook, PC (May 25, 1879 - June 9, 1964) was a Canadian - British business tycoon and politician. Aitken was born in Maple, Ontario, Canada in 1879. The following year, his family moved to Newcastle, New Brunswick, the place Aitken would always call home. It was here, at the age of 13, he published his first newspaper.

Daring To Dream Beyond The Impossible

2009-06-01T17:45:00.000+08:00

" Dare To Dream"
Fiery eyes pierce through the heart of the one who dares to dream. Often these lookers of fatal unbelief threaten the pursuit of the dreamer and shrivel their ambition from infinite opportunities to finite destinations.

The death of a dream is tragic but has no end, the legacy lives on as a haunting reminder of what could have been. The epitaph of a terminated dream tells the story of lives untouched, sick left for dead, discouraged giving up, church doors closed, hungry unfed, captives still in prison,

silenced songs, unwritten books, messages never preached, talents buried and the list goes on and on revealing the lasting effect that one man or one woman can leave that will penetrate through generations.

How can we let the faithless minority allow us to stoop to their level? They may be able perform valiantly putting the dreamer under pressure with their belittling opinions, but if you courageously stand and invite them to join, you will hear them silence returning to their recliner of comfort into the windowless, doorless walls of the ordinary.

What would happen if we would dare to dream? Then take that dream that is so dear to us, release that dream knowing not where it may take us, whether it bring sorrow, pain, fear or despair, releasing in to the hands of the Dream Giver. The One who created that dream before we were ever alive to access.
The story of Joseph is an example to all Godly dreamers. How Joseph shared his dream with his brothers resulting bitter hatred and insane jealousy, but Joseph kept dreaming. Then they attempted to kill him throwing him down into a well to leave him to die, but Joseph kept dreaming. Then they decided they letting him die would be to easy so they sold him as a slave to Egypt, but all the way to an unknown future, leaving everything he had ever known he kept on dreaming. The story goes on how he labored and done his best throughout his allotted time of circumstance. With every waking morning and every sleeping night he thought of the home-place and about that dream he had so long ago, he may have wiped the tears and wondered how his current fate could ever lead to the bliss of his dream, but Joseph kept dreaming. His endurance earned him favor with Potiphar leaving him in charge of all his possessions. At the first sign of success came the blow of the tempter. Potiphar's wife, a beautiful Egyptian women begin to seduce the strong and handsome stranger, but her beauty and temporal temptation could not steal his virtue or size up his passion for his dream. He turned his back and fled, she grabbed his coat, but he retained his integrity making him a candidate of a dream coming true. This act of dignity did not earn applause, but false accusations and a home in the dungeon.( One who takes a stand may end up on the front page of false report, they may attempt to banish your reputation, but they can't eliminate your dream). Still his courage and faith in the Dream Giver made him the jail boss. I'm sure the stench of the lonely prison was at times a slap in the face reality where his foolish dreams were leading him, but something down deep inside kept crying out, " It won't always be like this." With that thought he took the destitute doom of the present reality and replaced it with a fulfilling factual future of complete certainty of a better day coming.

Soon God used Joseph to interpret dreams of two of the kings employees who were inmates in the prison. The one survivor promised he would mention Joseph to the king as soon as he was released to his job. To Joseph's disappointment the man went on with his life and forgot Joseph. ( Sometimes your dreams may lead you somewhere seemingly the opposite direction. Maybe the dungeon of disappointment contains your dream under lock and key, the balls and chains of discouragement weight you down to the point you are presented with the thought of betraying your dream and going back to ordinary." Stay true to your dream!" Though the dark prison walls surround you, there is a light within the depths of your heart that pierces through the thickest, high security barricade, though in physical reality you may not be released, your dream can fly free under the light of the Son and you can rest in peace knowing the darkest hour is just before the dawning of a new day." What a difference one day can make in the life of a dreamer." " When I am weak, then I am strong.....2Cor 12:10." The trip to the dungeon is often the ticket that will bring it all to pass. Soon after the experience in the dungeon you will actually look back with tears and a smile and thank God for allowing you to be put there.)

You see Joseph's dungeon experience brought him closer to the king. One day the king needed a dream interpreted and guess who remembered? Joseph was called to the palace and there God anointed him with the interpretation of the kings dream and there he went from a resident of the dungeon to second most powerful ruler in the nation. ( Faith in the dungeon earns crowns in the palace). Because Joseph stayed true to his dream, it came to pass in the most unlikely place, the dungeon. ( You and your dream may be in a dungeon sentenced to impossibility, but remember this is your opportune moment to get closer to the KING. Your prison is on the same piece of land as the palace, your labor will soon be remembered and it will just be a walk next door to the reality of your dream. Take that blind step of faith and wait on the arms of the Giver of Dreams to carry you the rest of the way. Soon the stories of the dungeon will turn to jewels in your crown.)

In time Joseph, the mighty ruler begin to live out his dream point by point. Soon trouble came to the land, but Joseph being equipped and experienced with trouble became the deliverer. The great famine met the mercy of the wisdom God gave Joseph, who had a storehouse of plenty for all to partake. Not only Egypt enjoyed the prosperity, but Joseph opened his arms to fellow countries. Soon a caravan of desperate men from afar off entered the land and requested company with the mighty ruler. There as they entered the door, they bowed low in humility and desperation, hoping somehow to find favor with this great man. Joseph stared, his heart racing, tears tempting to escape. At that moment Joseph, the dreamer became his dream. That dream so long ago of the stars bowing to the moon, how foolish it seemed then, but Joseph kept dreaming and the day came when his dream redeemed the very ones that transgressed against him, that mocked, ridiculed and even tried to eliminate him. He chose to embrace love and reject hate, he chose to be believe all by himself. The lonely journey, brought him the devotion of multitudes. Though in life he never returned home, his family came to him and humbly reconciled and lived among him. His last words was a request that his body be laid to rest in Canaan, his home and the inspiring beginning place of the birth of a dream.
If you dare to dream at the expense of a risk and let God be your launching pad you will see and reach places you wouldn't think possible. There may be a trail of tears, rocky roads of experience, but there will come a day you will arrive to the destination of a dream, in the same breath the book of your eventful journey will unfold its pages revealing it's purpose, soaking wet with the anointing as you are handed over by The Dream Giver to a waiting world who needs what you have to offer.

COurage = Success??

2009-06-01T16:49:00.000+08:00

By Baron Max Aitken Beaverbrook
Courage! It sounds an easy quality to possess, bringing with it the dreams of V.C.s, and bestowing on every man worth the name the power to endure physical danger. But courage in business is a more complex affair. It presupposes a logical dilemma which can only be escaped in the field of practice.

The man who has nothing but courage easily lets this quality turn into mere stubbornness, and a crass obstinacy is as much a hindrance to business success as a moral weakness. Yet to the man who does not possess moral courage the most brilliant abilities may prove utterly useless. There is the folly of resistance and the folly of complaisance. There is the tendency towards eternal compromise and the desire for futile battle. Until the mind of youth has adjusted itself between the two extremes and formed a technique which is not so much independent of either tendency as inclusive of both, youth cannot hope for great success.

The evils which pure stubbornness brings in its train are perfectly clear. Men cling to a business indefinitely in the fond wish that a loss may yet be turned into a profit. They hope on for a better day which their intelligence tells them will never dawn. For this attitude of mind stupidity is a better word than stubbornness, and a far better word than courage. When reason and judgment bid us give up the immediate battle and start afresh on some new line, it is intellectual cowardice, not moral courage, which bids us persevere. This obstinacy is the reverse of the shield of which courage is the shining emblem - for courage in its very essence can never be divorced from judgment.

But it is easy for the character to run to the other extreme. There is a well-known type of Jewish business man who never succeeds because he is always too ready to compromise before the goal of a transaction has been attained. To such a mind the certainty of half a loaf is always better than the probability of a whole one. One merely mentions the type to accentuate the paradox. Great affairs above all things require for their successful conduct that class of mind which is eminently sensitive to the drift of events, to the characters or changing views of friends and opponents, to a careful avoidance of that rigidity of standpoint which stamps the doctrinaire or the mule. The mind of success must be receptive and plastic. It must know by the receptivity of its capacities whether it is paddling against the tide or with it.

But it is perfectly clear that this quality in the man of affairs, which is akin to the artistic temperament, may very easily degenerate into mere pliability. Never fight, always negotiate for a remnant of the profits, becomes the rule of life. At each stage in the career the primroses will beckon more attractively towards the bonfire, and the uphill path of contest look more stony and unattractive. In this process the intellect may remain unimpaired, but the moral fibre degenerates.

I once had to make a choice of this nature in the days of my youth when I was forming the Canada Cement Company. One of the concerns offered for sale to the combine was valued at far too high a price. In fact, it was obvious that only by selling it at this over-valuation could its debts be paid. The president of this overvalued concern was connected with the most powerful group of financiers that Canada has ever seen. Their smile would mean fortune to a young man, and their frown ruin to men of lesser position. The loss of including an unproductive concern at an unfair price would have been little to me personally - but it would have saddled the new amalgamated industry and the investors with a liability instead of an asset. It was certainly far easier to be pliable than to be firm. Every kind of private pressure was brought to bear on me to accede to the purchase of the property.

When this failed, all the immense engines for the formation of public opinion which were at the disposal of the opposing forces were directed against me in the form of vulgar abuse. And that attack was very cleverly directed. It made no mention of my refusal to buy a certain mill for the combine at an excessive cost to the shareholding public. On the contrary, those who had failed to induce me to break faith with the investing public appealed to that public to condemn me for forming a Trust.

I am prepared now to confess that I was bitterly hurt and injured by the injustice of these attacks. But I regret nothing. Why? Because these early violent criticisms taught me to treat ferocious onslaughts in later life with complete indifference. A certain kind of purely cynical intelligence would hold that I should have been far wiser to adopt the pliable rôle. But that innate judgment which dwells in the recesses of the mind tells me that my whole capacity for action in affairs would have been destroyed by the moral collapse of yielding to that threat. Pliability would have become a habit rather than a matter of judgment and will, for fortitude only comes by practice.

Every young man who enters business will at some time or another meet a similar crisis which will determine the bias of his career and dictate his habitual technique in negotiation.

But he may well exclaim, "How do you help me? You say that courage may be stubbornness and even stupidity - and compromise a mere form of cowardice or weakness. Where is the true courage which yet admits of compromise to be found?

It is the old question: How can firmness be combined with adaptability to circumstances? There is no answer except that the two qualities must be made to run concurrently in the mind. One must be responsive to the world, and yet sensible of one's own personality. It is only the special circumstance of a grave crisis which will put a young man to this crucial test of judgment. The case will have to be judged on its merits, and yet the final decision will affect the whole of his career. But one practical piece of advice can be given. Never bully, and never talk about the whip-hand - it is a word not used in big business.

The view of the intellect often turns towards compromise when the direction of the character is towards battle. Such a conflict of tendencies is most likely to lead to the wise result. The fusion of firmness with a careful weighing of the risks will best attain the real decision which is known as courage. The intellectual judgment will be balanced by the moral side. Any man who could attain this perfect balance between these two parallel sides of his mind would have attained, at a single stroke, all that is required to make him eminent in any walk of life. One regards perfection, but cannot attain it. None the less, it is out of this struggle to combine a sense of proportion with an innate hardihood that true courage is born; and courage is success.

Free To Fly - Dare to be a Success

2009-05-30T00:37:00.000+08:00

by Helene Rothschild
Are you finding that no matter how hard you try, you are not reaching your goals? Are you ready to enjoy a loving relationship, a successful career, a healthy and trim body, and prosperity?

Then close your eyes and imagine that you are in a beautiful air balloon ready to take off, to have what you want in your life. Now look towards the ground and notice if there are any ropes holding you down, stopping you from being free to fly.

In order to move on in your life, it is necessary to cut those ropes—to overcome not your fears of failure but your fears of success. You may be as surprised as I was when I first discovered the fear of success. It seems illogical to push away the very things we desire.

However, my very first client opened my eyes to this fascinating phenomenon. In her counseling session, Betty told me that she desperately wanted her boyfriend to ask her to marry him.

I have a favorite saying, “Close your eyes and see clearly.” So I said, “Betty, close your eyes and imagine that your boyfriend is proposing. How do you feel?” Betty replied, “Terrified!” There it was; the first of many of my clues of the insidious fear of success.

John wanted to become president of his company. But felt scared when he visualized himself in that position. John was unaware that unconsciously he was afraid of the responsibility that comes with that role. The part of John that was afraid was sabotaging him from moving on in his career.

After working with many clients, I am convinced that we are very powerful beings. I never have to help people to become successful. All I need to do is to help them to be aware of and overcome their unconscious fears, and then they effortlessly fulfill their dreams. Once they cut the ropes that were tying them down, they suddenly meet their perfect mate, or are offered the job or promotion they were seeking. For the first time in their lives, they find losing weight to be effortless. They heal their bodies, and allow themselves to receive the money they need. They let go of their addictions and take control of their lives.

We are unique, but our problems are not. See if you recognize any of your fears, your blocks to success, so that you can overcome them and experience the exhilaration of flying free in your air balloon.

The “SEVEN FEARS OF SUCCESS” are:

1. Fear of the unknown. “I don’t know what it would be like to be in a loving relationship or successful career.”

2. Fear that success doesn’t fit your self image. “What’s a poor girl from Brooklyn doing in an exclusive social club in California?”

3. Fear that people will not like you if you are successful. “If I’m successful in my career, no man will want me.”

4. Fear that you don’t deserve success. “I feel guilty because I once stole money from my parents.”

5. Fear that success has a scary consequence. “If I get the promotion, I won’t have enough time to spend with my family.”

6. Fear that your parents won’t love you if you’re more successful than they are. “I don’t want my father to feel bad.”

7. Fear that to be successful is to fulfill your parents’ wishes. “I’m angry at them for not showing me enough attention when I was a kid. I’ll show them—I won’t have a successful career.”

To my amazement, these last two fears concerning the parents kept coming up in the office, even though sometimes Mom and Dad were deceased for many years. Our fears, like all of our emotions, can be very irrational. However, they are still very real and definitely affect our lives. Most people think they are struggling with the fear of failure, which I have found to be only the top of the iceberg. The unconscious fear of success is at the bottom, the part we don’t see that hurts us the most.

For example, Bob, a young engineer, was angry at his boss for not delegating him more responsibility. Under all that anger was fear; he was afraid he wasn’t smart enough to do the job. I asked Bob to go back to the time when he made the decision that he was dumb. Bob recalled an incident when he was four years old, and needing his grandfather’s help to tie his shoes. The little boy felt he had to act stupid in order to gain the extra attention. The decision Bob had made, “If I’m intelligent, I won’t get attention,” followed him into adult life. Bob recognized his fear of success and made a new decision, “I’m intelligent and I get enough attention.” At the next counseling session Bob smiled as he told me how his boss was giving him more responsibility.

The fear of success comes up very often in relationships. We meet someone special and we start getting close, too close. Suddenly we begin finding fault with each other. “Her nose is too big. He’s too short.” We become demanding and start arguments. We make commitments and break them. We drive each other crazy. We say, “Come close, I want to love you and share my life with you. But stay away because I’m afraid. I’m afraid to be vulnerable and feel hurt. I’m afraid I don’t deserve to be happy. I’m afraid I’m unlovable.”

Susan, a twenty-six-year-old attractive blond, was in tears as she told me how much she wanted to be married. However, all the men in her life kept leaving her. Susan regressed back to the time when she was five years old and devastated because her father moved out of their house. Since children feel responsible for everything that happens, Susan decided from that experience that she was unlovable, and that men she loves leave her. Ironically, the men in her adult life kept leaving her, actualizing her self-fulfilling prophesy. Susan succeeded in healing her inner child and realized the truth—that she is lovable, and that men she loves will stay with her. With those new positive thoughts in her unconscious mind, she began to attract more successful relationships.

Male clients had similar fears that were sabotaging their relationships. They also had the additional concern about taking on the responsibility of the financial commitment a marriage may entail. They were relieved when they discovered that they were okay even if their wife helped with their finances, and even if their wives earned more money than they did.

Clients taught me that often our illness and accidents are a result of the fear of success.

Mary discovered that she often got sick in elementary school because she was very bright and the kids rejected her. By missing many classes, her grades dropped and she was more accepted by her peers. Mary was shocked when she realized that she was still following the same pattern in her adult life.

Are you also feeling safe but not satisfied?

If you are ready to be all that you are and have what you desire, then close your eyes and imagine that you are in your beautiful air balloon. Feel the weights of the fears of success dropping off easily so that you can take off. Look below and notice the beautiful green meadow, the majestic mountains in the distance, and the peaceful blue sky filled with puffy white clouds. Notice that you are free to fly!

(Excerpts from the tape and book, Free to Fly—Dare To Be A Success and the e-book: Seven Major Keys to Success)

©1997 by Helene Rothschild, MS, MA, MFT, Marriage, Family, Therapist, speaker, and author. http://www.helenerothschild.com

Performance

2009-05-29T23:45:00.001+08:00

A performance, in performing arts, generally comprises an event in which one group of people (the performer or performers) behave in a particular way for another group of people (the audience). Sometimes the dividing line between performer and the audience may become blurred, as in the example of "participatory theatre" where audience members might get involved in the production. Singing choral music, and performing in a ballet are examples. Usually the performers participate in rehearsals beforehand. Afterwards audience members often clap, indicating appreciation. However, sometimes this rule is reversed. In Japan, the greatest compliment is complete silence.

Performances, for example in theatre, can take place daily, or at some other regular interval. Performances can take place at someone's house, in a subway, or even at a dollar store. Talent, on the other hand, is subjective.

Kunci Poligami Menurut Anis Matta

2009-05-28T14:25:00.001+08:00

Jakarta - Bicara soal poligami, Anis Matta mesti didengarkan. Sebab, pengetahuannya soal poligami tidak berhenti pada tataran teori. Sekjen PKS ini sering terlihat 'runtang-runtung' bersama dua istrinya.

Istri Anis Matta yang kedua adalah seorang wanita asal Hongaria. Cantik khas wanita Eropa Timur, berkulit putih, dan berpostur tinggi. Dalam beberapa kesempatan, Anis sering membawa serta kedua istrinya.

Keduanya dia kenalkan pada orang-orang yang mengenalnya. "Ini istri saya yang kedua," katanya gentle.

Kedua istri Anis Matta juga tampak akrab. Bila menghadiri suatu acara, mereka selalu duduk berdampingan dan terlihat sesekali bercengkrama. Satu hal lagi, kedua wanita itu tinggal serumah dengan Anis Matta.

Kepada detikcom, Kamis (7/12/2006), Anis Matta menyampaikan "kata kunci" tentang poligami. Berikut ini pokok pikirannya:

1. Gunakan pendekatan kesisteman dalam memandang masalah poligami: ini adalah pilihan-pilihan sosial yag disediakan Islam. Setiap orang boleh melakukan atau tidak melakukannya sesuai dengan kondisinya.

2. Perkawinan adalah kontrak sosial yang terjadi antara orang-orang dewasa yang berakal sehat dan mampu memilih dan mereka berhak untuk berbahagia dengan pilihan mereka.

3. Kalau ada keluarga poligami yang berbahagia dengan pilihan mereka, mengapa di alam demokrasi ini ada pihak yang mau memaksakan pilihan hidup lain kepada mereka termasuk dalam hal ini pemerintah?

4. Secara empiris tidak ada suatu data statistik yang menyatakan bahwa keluarga monogami lebih bahagia daripada keluarga poligami. Jadi siapa bilang istri tunggal lebih bahagia dari istri-istri poligami?

5. Secara sosial laki-laki yang memilih berpoligami jauh lebih bertanggung jawab dan lebih menghargai wanita daripada laki-laki yang meniduri wanita dalam kencan semalam (one night stand) lalu melupakannya.(nrl/umi)

Cinta Sejati ala Anis Matta dan Scott Peck

2009-05-28T14:21:00.002+08:00

Artikel M Anis Matta, “Pekerjaan Orang Kuat”, telah banyak dikutip di internet. Mengingat bagusnya isi di dalamnya, aku turut senang atas tersebarnya tausiyah tersebut. Hanya saja, aku agak kecewa ketika mendapati kutipan yang tidak lengkap, sehingga maknanya menjadi menyimpang. Diantaranya, ada kutipan: “Cinta dan perasaan dalam mencintai hanya akan melahirkan para pembual yang menguasai hanya satu keterampilan: menebar janji.” Padahal, yang lengkap: “Cinta dan kepribadian adalah dua kata yang tumbuh bersama dan sejajar. Makin kuat kepribadian kita, makin mampu kita mencintai dengan kuat. Mengandalkan perasaan saja dalam mencintai hanya akan melahirkan para pembual yang menguasai hanya satu keterampilan: menebar janji.” (Nah, perhatikanlah perbedaannya!)

Sungguhpun demikian, aku tidak hendak memperpanjang masalah tidak lengkapnya kutipan itu. Di sini aku hendak mengajakmu untuk memperhatikan betapa selarasnya tausiyah Anis Matta tersebut (2004) dengan filsafat cintanya M Scott Peck dalam buku The Road Less Traveled (1985). (Anis Matta ialah seorang muslim Indonesia, politisi muda, lebih muda setahun dariku. Sedangkan M Scott Peck itu nonmuslim dari Amerika Serikat, seorang psikiater kawakan.)

Anis Matta menulis:

Cinta adalah kata yang mewakili seperangkat kepribadian yang utuh: gagasan, emosi, dan tindakan. Gagasannya adalah tentang bagaimana membuat orang yang kita cintai tumbuh dan berkembang menjadi lebih baik dan berbahagia karenanya. Ia juga emosi yang peuh kehangatan dan gelora karena seluruh isinya adalah semata-mata keinginan baik. Tapi ia harus mengejawantah dalam tindakan nyata. Sebab gagasan dan emosi tidak merubah apa pun dalam kehidupan kita kecuali setelah ia menjelma jadi aksi.

Scott Peck telah menulis:

Bila kita mencintai seseorang, cinta kita dapat dibuktikan atau diwujudkan hanya dengan cara pengerahan tenaga kita sendiri–yakni dengan kenyataan bahwa demi seseorang tersebut (atau demi diri kita sendiri) kita melakukan suatu langkah ekstra atau berjalan ber-mil-mil. Cinta bukan tanpa usaha. Sebaliknya, cinta itu penuh dengan usaha.

Anis Matta berkata, sebagaimana telah kukutip tadi: “Cinta dan kepribadian adalah dua kata yang tumbuh bersama dan sejajar. Makin kuat kepribadian kita, makin mampu kita mencintai dengan kuat.”

Sebelum Anis Matta mengatakan itu, Scott Peck sudah berkata:

Diantara sekian banyak perasaan yang harus didisiplinkan adalah perasaan cinta. Seperti yang telah saya katakan, perasaan ini tidak dengan sendirinya menjadi cinta sejati, tetapi masih berupa perasaan yang berkatian dengan kataksis [yakni pelepasan hal-hal negatif]. Perasaan ini haruslah dihargai dan dikembangkan agar daya kreatif yang dimilikinya dapat dipergunakan dengan baik. Tetapi bila perasaan ini dibiarkan merajalela, hasilnya bukanlah cinta sejati, melainkan kekacauan, sehingga menjadi tidak produktif. Karena cinta sejati meliputi pengembangan diri, tentu saja dibutuhkan tenaga [atau kekuatan] yang besar…

Anis Matta menyatakan:

Mencintai -dengan begitu- adalah pekerjaan yang membutuhkan kemampuan kepribadian. Maka para pecinta sejati selalu mengembangkan kepribadian mereka secara terus menerus. … Mereka yang ingin menjadi pecinta sejati harus terlebih dahulu membenahi dan mengembangkan kepribadiannya.

Scott Peck pun telah menyatakan:

Sesungguhnya, seperti yang telah dijelaskan, kita tidak akan mampu mencintai orang lain, kecuali jika kita mampu mencintai diri kita sendiri. Demikian juga, kita tidak dapat mengajar anak-anak kita berdisiplin, kecuali kalau kita telah berdisiplin diri. Sebenarnya, kita tidak mungkin mengabaikan perkembangan jiwa kita sendiri demi perkembangan jiwa orang lain. Kita tidak bisa mengabaikan disiplin diri sendiri ketika berdisiplin dalam menaruh perhatian kepada orang lain. Diri kita tidak mungkin menjadi sumber tenaga [untuk mencintai], kecuali jika kita memelihara kekuatan kita sendiri.

SABAR

2009-05-26T00:35:00.001+08:00

Ada sebuah riwayat tentang kesabaran yang diceritakan dalam kitab Jihadun Nafs karya Ayatullah Mazhahiri: Di masa Rasulullah, ada perempuan yang memiliki anak kecil. Perempuan ini seorang muslimah. la tidak bisa membaca dan menulis tapi ia mukmin yang sejati. Imannya memenuhi jantung dan hatinya. Keimanannya dibuktikan dalam kesabaran ketika menghadapi ujian. Suatu hari anaknya itu sakit sementara suaminya sedang berada di tempat jauh untuk bekerja. Ketika suaminya bekerja, si anak kecil itu rneninggal dunia. Istri itu duduk di samping anaknya dan menangis sejenak. la terjaga dari tangisannya. la menyadari bahwa sebentar lagi, suaminya akan pulang. la bergumam, 'Kalau aku menangis terus menerus di samping jenazah anakku ini, kehidupan tidak akan dikembalikan kepadanya dan aku akan melukai perasaan suamiku. Padahal ia akan pulang dalam keadaan lelah.' Kemudian ia meletakkan anaknya yang sudah meninggal itu pada suatu tempat.

Tibalah suaminya dari tempat kerjanya yang jauh. Ketika suaminya hendak masuk ke rumah, istri itu menyambutnya dengan senyum ramah. la sembunyikan kesedihan dan ia sambut suaminya dengan mengajaknya makan. la basuh kaki suaminya itu. Suaminya berkata, 'Mana anak kita yang sakit?' Istrinya menjawab, 'Alhamdulillah ia sudah lebih baik.' Istri itu tidak berbohong karena anak kecilnya sudah berada di surga yang keadaannya jauh lebih baik. Istri itu terus berusaha menghibur suaminya yang baru datang. Ia ajak suaminya untuk tidur hingga terbangun menjelang waktu subuh.

Sang suami bangun, mandi, dan shalat qabla subuh. Ketika ia akan berangkat ke mesjid untuk shalat berjamaah, istrinya mendekat sambil berkata, 'Suamiku aku punya keperluan.' 'Sebutkanlah," kata suaminya. Sang istri menjawab, 'Kalau ada seseorang yang menitipkan amanat kepada kita, lalu pada saatnya orang itu mengambil amanat tersebut dari kita, bagaimana pendapatmu kalau amanat itu kita tahan dan kita tidak mau memberikan kepadanya?' Suaminya menjawab, 'Pastilah aku menjadi suami yang paling buruk akhlaknya dan khianat dalam beramal. Itu merupakan perbuatan yang sangat tercela. Aku wajib mengembalikan amanat itu kepada pemiliknya."

Lalu istrinya berkata, 'Sudah tiga tahun, Allah menitipkan amanat kepada kita. Hari kemarin, dengan kehendak-Nya, Allah mengambil amanat itu dari kita. Anak kita sekarang sudah meninggal dunia. la ada di kamar sebelah. Sekarang berangkatlah engkau dan lakukanlah shalat.' Suaminya pergi ke kamar untuk menengok anaknya yang telah meninggal. la Ialu pergi ke masjid untuk shalat berjamaah di masjid Nabi. Pada waktu itu Nabi menjemputnya seraya berkata, 'Diberkatilah malam kamu yang tadi itu.' Malam itu adalah malam ketika suami istri itu bersabar dalam menghadapi musibah.

I am so glad today, My Little Uncle has been married

2009-05-21T19:54:00.002+08:00

Guys..i am so glad today. My Little Uncle has been married with Palu's girl.
finally he start a new life..to be Husband...

It makes me have high motivate to follow him...to be husband.
I must have target to marry in one-two years later.

Pray to me i ' ll get my Angel. Amin..

I do Hope...

Why is Phenomenal Internet Business Success Elusive to 98.5%?

2009-05-16T09:56:00.000+08:00

Everyone still agrees the internet and doing business on the internet, is full of high yield and virtually infinite potential. The internet marketplace is still a "sleeping giant." Many folks desperately wish to succeed with an internet home based business, but statistically the phenomenal success is elusive.

The how to's to set a course for tangible success in launching a new business, is a necessary business building component many entrepreneurs scramble to locate.

The key is highly tailored content and information to meet the needs of would be entrepreneurs. Relevant information dismantles the mysteries behind developing your own internet home based business. It is often so true that it is not enough to have amazing products to stand behind you, the ultimate give away is information to propel a business plan to higher income sectors.

Highly regarded marketing systems support would be business owners with offers of interactive services, peer support, content and access to experts who already enjoy phenomenal achievements, whose incomes are punctuated with repeat business success stories.

I am sure you are like me in that when considering any business opportunities these days, on the internet or otherwise, information on what really works is everything. Have you wondered about all those internet success stories you've read about? Ever wonder what makes those people so special? Do they work harder than you do? Do they know something you don't know? I used to wonder about that myself. The whole money making thing started to make sense.

Yes, they do have information you don't have, Yes, there are secrets to making money online.

Consider entrepreneurial leadership, what are the characteristics of successful entrepreneurs? Find out who they are? Find out what they say about opportunities, search other articles, what are the key points in an opportunity? What are the benefits? What problems can be anticipated? What problem solutions can be targeted?

If you are serious about enhancing your financial future, consider proven methods of wealth building with big profit opportunities. You need only a computer, and intense desire to acquire the right information and an internet connection to locate a workable internet business opportunity that not only provides an income but can exceed expectations and change your own personal fortune. The real challenge of finding the right information and an opportunity that really works is finding a proven business plan.

There are huge advantages in seeking information from well regarded experts. A workable business opportunity with phenomenal results happens when you invest your time in a business you can learn quickly, if you have the right attitude and discipline for personal growth and success and really desire financial freedom. Getting your goals and dreams down on paper so you can focus on achieving them.

The secret-intellectual distribution, the ultimate give-away really is expert information.

The Power of Focus

2009-05-16T09:28:00.001+08:00

Someone once said, “If you two chase two rabbits, both will escape.” How true. The image I get is of lots of wasted energy and nothing to show for it.

That is also the image I get when I picture laid off lawyers and professionals on a rabid job search. I keep hearing stories about these people who have sent literally hundreds of resumes out to all sorts of places. That sounds productive, but the truth is that the exercise of flinging resumes in every conceivable direction lacks focus and clarity—so it is likely to result in . . . lots of wasted energy and nothing to show for it.

The power of focus cannot be underestimated in the effort to create a new opportunity—whether it is a job, an on-line enterprise, a small venture or a big business. I often get asked how one is to create focus when one has no idea what direction to take, given that all the rules have changed and nothing obvious seems to be viable.

Here’s how: step back, figure out precisely what you want, know precisely why you want it, learn to tell that story, get passionate about it, and then put all of your energy into creating it. This approach cannot fail. There is a mysterious power in clarity and focus that will outperform mountains of random effort every time.

You Are More Than Your Career

2009-05-16T09:26:00.000+08:00

I work regularly with big law lawyers and other intense professionals in reinventing themselves—sometimes due to a layoff and other times during a time of transition brought about by a desire to reach beyond their current circumstance.

In both cases, I find that most of these professionals have little to no identity beyond their careers. When I ask them what they love to do or how they love to spend their free time, they look at me like I am speaking in a foreign language. And for many of them, I am. Their careers have left them little time or energy to know themselves beyond that limited context. It is no wonder that the idea of leaving that context can be downright terrifying.

There is tremendous power in coming to know ourselves outside of the career context. Setting aside the “need to earn a living” (even for a few days) can allow us to reconnect with who we really are, what we really love to do and the many ways that we might choose to structure our lives if we really believed we had a choice. And suddenly, we realize that we do have a choice—many more, in fact, than we ever knew.

If you are in a time of transition, no matter what the reason, embrace the opportunity to get to know yourself outside of your career. There is far more to you and your life than how you earn a living.

Freedom...

2009-05-16T09:20:00.001+08:00

Freedom, or the idea of being free, is a broad concept that has been given numerous interpretations by philosophies and schools of thought. The protection of interpersonal freedom can be the object of a social and political investigation, while the metaphysical foundation of inner freedom is a philosophical and psychological question.

How to Apologize to your Friend

2009-05-15T13:44:00.001+08:00

Any relation is bound to have its highs and lows. Sometimes the lows are so low that you end up in a fight. The agony of sulking and being away from your partner is worse than going to Hell. You seem to be blank about how to say sorry. Patching up after a fight has never been so difficult. Read on further to find out ways to apologize to your partner and get your relationship back on track.

Though it may seem odd at first, saying sorry to a loved one has its own benefits. You become more understanding and more tolerant of each other. You can tackle those petty issues that keep cropping up between the two of you without making a big fuss about it. Given below are a few tips to make it even more genuine and romantic. Also, check our related sections on how to apologize to a guy and a girl.

* Make sure you don't make a big fuss about saying sorry. It is just one word and remember, it can either make or break your relationship.
* Say it with flowers and anything that your partner loves. If she loves dancing, take her out for a slow dance and say you are sorry while she is dancing in your arms. If he loves bowling, go out for a game together and tell him when he has finished striking all pins that you are sorry.
* Never start arguing as to who started the fight first. No use looking back on something that is just not worth. Else, you will be back on square one.
* Make sure you are genuinely sorry for your mistakes. Don't try to fake up feelings just for the heck of it. Remember, it could happen to you too someday.
* Value your partner. Learn to respect his/her feelings and don't do things to hurt him/her deliberately.

I am Sorry

2009-05-15T12:11:00.001+08:00

Sometimes its hard to open your eyes and look back on the “truths” of your life.
Especially when during those “truths” you kept your eyes closed.
It pains me to know that people in my life saw through me the whole time.
It saddens me to know that there were those who had faith and love in me, and I betrayed their emotions.
I’ve commited the murder of emotions…
And I’ve killed feelings that were once directed at me.
Im sorry to them…
Im also I’m sorry to me.

How to Say I'm Sorry

2009-05-15T12:03:00.001+08:00

In order to understand how to say I'm sorry and have it be an effective apology, we need to know what kind of statements to include when apologizing. How does one person make someone else understand that they truly are sorry?

As we discussed on the "how to apologize" page, apologizing is both an Art and a Science. The Art being the manner in which the apology is delivered while the Science is the recipe that forms the apology itself.

This page will look at the "Science" or ingredient list that when combined produces the perfect apology.

A proper apology should always include the following:

- a detailed account of the situation
- acknowledgement of the hurt or damage done
- taking responsibility for the situation
- recognition of your role in the event
- a statement of regret
- asking for forgiveness
- a promise that it won't happen again
- a form of restitution whenever possible

Now let's take a closer look at each of these ingredients and learn how to say I'm sorry in the most effective way.

By giving a detailed account of the offence, you are making sure that both you and the other person are talking about the same thing. It also legitimizes the feelings of the recipient by having the person who caused the offence recount the situation.

Keep in mind that you should be as specific as possible and your apology should be focused on the particular event(s). For example, if you missed an important date, don't apologize for your general absentmindedness but instead for missing that specific date.

Next, by acknowledging the hurt or damage done, you are validating their feelings and the recipient begins to sense that you understand the situation. This is important to rebuilding your relationship because it legitimizes their reaction, even if others in the same situation may have reacted differently.

Taking responsibility and recognizing your role in the situation without offering excuses is important to letting them know that you understand that the event and your actions did cause them harm.

Don't try to defend yourself or justify the situation or your actions. The apology is all about THEM and how they feel. It doesn't matter if the actions were intentional or not, the end result is the same and that is what needs to be focused on when learning how to say I'm sorry.

Including a statement of regret such as I "apologize" or "I'm sorry" along with a promise that it won't happen again are important to rebuilding the relationship and are key ingredients to any apology. After all, there is no value in apologizing for something that you will do again and again.

Finally, asking for forgiveness at the end of the apology gives the "power" back to the recipient. It tells them, that you have done all that you can do by apologizing and providing whatever form of restitution you can. The next move is up to them.

By carefully including all of these ingredients and applying them to your situation you will know exactly how to say I’m sorry, the next time you need to apologize.

Don't Quit - You're Closer to Your Goal Than You Think

2009-05-13T23:56:00.003+08:00

Champions aren't made in gyms. Champions are made from something they have deep inside them--a desire, a goal, a vision. They have to have the skill and the will. But the will must be stronger than the skill." Muhammad Ali

Have you ever noticed someone that came ever so close to their goal, only to give up before getting there? A poem that I have always posted on the bulletin board in my locker rooms is about not quitting:

Don't Quit

When things go wrong as they sometimes will,
When the road you're trudging seems all uphill,
When the funds are low and the debts are high
And you want to smile but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit,
Rest if you must
But don't you quit.

Life is queer with its twists and turns
As every one of us sometimes learns,
And many a failure turns about
When he might have won had he stuck it out;
Don't give up though the pace seems slow--
You may succeed with another blow.

Success is failure turned inside out--
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt,
And you never can tell how close you are,
It may be near when it seems so far,
So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit--
It's when things seem worst that you must not quit!
Anonymous

So what do you need to be able to stick to your guns?

You need to believe: When former football coach Lou Holtz took over the football program at South Carolina, they weren't very good. South Carolina was getting ready to play a game where they were a 21 point underdog. No one believed they could win--the players, the alumni, or the media. Holtz asked his team, "Tell me all of the reasons why we are going to win this game." Silence filled the room. After what seemed like an eternity someone answered. Although the process started off slowly, within an hour Holtz had over 50 reasons why they would win the game. The focus shifted to why they were going to lose to why they were going to win the game. They won the game!

"When the why gets stronger, the how gets easier." Jim Rohn

You need a plan of action: President John F. Kennedy said, "There are risks and costs to action. But they are far less that the long range risks of comfortable inaction." As my Uncle Harold used to say--Off and On--Off your butt and on your feet. Remove can't from your vocabulary. Go forward or go backward. Do whatever it takes. But do something!

You have to have the desire to succeed: According to race car driver Mario Andretti--"Desire is the key to motivation, but it's determination and commitment to an unrelenting pursuit of your goal--a commitment to excellence--that will enable you to attain the success you seek." What if that South Carolina football team believed they could win that game, and the coaching staff had a game plan, but it just wasn't important enough for the players to succeed? What do you think the outcome of that game would have been?

You need to stay the course: H. Ross Perot, Texas billionaire and former Presidential candidate has this to say about persistence--"Most people give up just when they're about to achieve success. They quit on the one yard line. They give up at the last minute of the game, one foot from a winning touchdown." What if the Pittsburgh Steelers had given up when Arizona had taken the lead in the last minute of the game? There is a Japanese proverb that applies to sports, business, and life--"Fall seven times, stand up eight."

How small is the difference between winning and losing, success and failure?

According to S. L. Parker in his 212 Degree-The Extra degree, the difference between first place and being just another contender is miniscule. Parker cites the following examples:

1. During the period 1977-2001, the average margin of victory on the professional golf tour was 2.36 strokes. Or, 0.59 strokes per day.

2. During the period 1998-2002, the average margin of victory in the Triple Crown horse racing series (15 races) was 2.2 lengths. Six of those races were decided by less than a single length.

3. During the 2002 Winter Olympic Games the margin of victory between a gold medal and no medal was: Men's Downhill Skiing 0.65 seconds, Women's Downhill Skiing 0.93 seconds, Men's 500 Meter Speed Skating 0.26 seconds, Women's 500 Meter Speed Skating 0.62 seconds.

4. During the 2000 Summer Olympic Games the margin of victory between a gold medal and no medal was: Men's 800 Meter Run 0.21 seconds, Women's 800 Meter Run 2.36 seconds, Men's Long Jump 29 centimeters, Women's Long Jump 16 centimeters.

"The line between failure and success is so fine that we are often on the line and do not know it. How many a man has thrown up his hands at a time when a little more effort, a little more patience, would have achieved success. A little more effort and what seemed hopeless failure may turn to glorious success." Elbert Hubbard

So what's it gonna be? The choice is yours. Remember--"Failure will never overtake you if your determination to succeed is strong enough."

The Struggle for Power in Societies from the Age-of-Ignorance and Today

2009-05-13T23:52:00.000+08:00

Throughout history possessing authority and power, ruling and leading people or, in short, the idea of dominance has been an important factor in directing a person or institutions in social events, political disputes and every kind of inter-personal relations. Ruthless struggles and conflict have been experienced among various people, groups or societies for the purpose of taking over authority to rule. Just as in every subject, on the topic of sovereignty, Allah intended to realize a revolutionary movement based on the principles of unity, justice and equality; to construct this social system based on these principles by means of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh); and thus to eliminate the oppression, disorder, anarchy and chaos dominating societies.

In regard to the perception of power, there are striking parallels between the perception that dominates many social structures today and that of the age-of-ignorance in which the Prophet lived. From a socio-political perspective, those dominant in Arab societies during the age-of-ignorance were: the wealthy, those possessing power, and men of religion who collaborated with these. These three groups had unlimited authority in society to set rules, implement them or change them. These people set all the rules and regulations in the social structure and established them to their own best interests. For this reason, the weak being oppressed and destroyed by the strong was perceived and practiced as a traditional law. Powerful families and tribes attacked the powerless and weak, pillaged their property and took their women and children as slaves. Slavery was accepted as an indispensable element of the social structure. Slaves, male and female, were seen as animals; they were bought and sold and could easily be killed. Violation of the rights of orphans was at its height. People acting as guardians of orphan girls seized their property to avoid losing it and refused permission for them to marry. Society was divided into notables and non-notables. Those with slave origins, the poor, the weak and those of non-Arabic origin called the mütearibe had no say in society or in the determination of the society's structure or future. Injustice and oppression were the main factors dominant in the functioning of society. Girls were seen as creatures that gave embarrassment to their fathers and were sometimes savagely buried in the ground after their birth. Discord, anarchy and chaos dominated society in every aspect.

Arab idolaters accepted the metaphysical and cosmological authority of Allah in principle; however, they opposed the sole, absolute sovereignty of Allah in social life. Even though they based some social rules and regulations on Allah, they, themselves, established social rules in accordance with their own best self-interests. So for this reason the Meccan idolaters, the prominent Meccans in particular, violently opposed the idea of Allah's sole and unlimited sovereignty in both the whole universe and social life as embodied in the Prophet's call, "la ilahe illallah." These powers that dominated society usually attributed to Allah the rules and regulations that they had put themselves. In addition, when it was to their interests, they did not hesitate to change and degenerate some traditional practices like pilgrimage and the forbidden months which remained in society as an extension from the periods of Hz. Abraham and Hz. Ishmael.

When we look around us, we see that the social structure similar to the one originating from the Arab perception in the age-of-ignorance is widespread today. The only criteria of the sovereignty that is attempting to be established today in the natural and social structure are perceived to be political, economic and military power. Those possessing these elements of power are trying to dominate their surroundings with them; they are not only trying to construct the social structure according to this power, but moral value judgments as well. When looked at from this angle, it is obvious that the perception and tradition of the age-of- ignorance that was widespread during Prophet Muhammad's (pbuh) time is also continuing today.

Thinking about the difference between the Islamic and age-of-ignorance traditions in regard to relations with the social and natural surroundings man lives in, will give us important building stones on the subject of comprehending the essence of Islam's message. Islam reminds us that in regard to divine authority, power or sovereignty, man is a part of the universe he lives in and it emphasizes that Allah is the only sovereign power in the universe. According to the age-of-ignorance understanding that is widespread in many societies today, man is in the center of the universe and the basic purpose of life is dominance and control of the social and natural environment. It is a fact that this misperception regarding man's existence lies in the foundation of many of the difficulties and problems we face today. Instead of understanding and building the structure of the universe of which man is a part and which is under the absolute sovereignty of Allah who created everything, man does not hesitate to destroy his social and natural environments due to his endless ambition to dominate. This ambition and unrestrained attitude has led to conflict throughout history, including today, and a destructive attitude of man towards his environment. The only escape from this is to accept Islam's message that Allah has absolute sovereignty over human life and to abstain from this unrestrained attitude and behavior.

Self Improvement - 9 Steps to Success in Your Life

2009-05-13T23:44:00.001+08:00

If you are wanting success in your life then you have to have the right formula to get you there.

Here are 9 steps to getting success in your life.

Step 1 - Believe in yourself this is the most important step of them all. Learning to truly believe in yourself and your abilities. It can be as easy as saying to yourself I am loveable, I am valuable, I am important, I believe I can do this.

Step 2 - Learning to follow good character values in your life. It is imperative to have and follow good character values. Being responsible, respectful, being honest, accountable, trustworthy ect... Because if you are not following good character values it will only be a matter of time before it brings you down.

Step 3 - Overcoming your fears it is hard to do but you must break through your fears. Fears are the no.1 stumbling blocks that holds people back and keeps them from taking action and without action you can not reach your goals.

Step 4 - Time Management is extremely important to control what you do with your time so that you can set time aside to work on your goals.

Step 5 - Turning your dreams to goals, you need to know exactly what you want out of life and make specific goals to achieve.

Step 6 - Team work is vital to your success you need to find others who are supportive of your dreams and have them help you along the way.

Step 7 - Making a plan to achieve your dreams. This is laying out the steps to do to get to where you want to be.

Step 8 - Taking action makes things start to come to life. You can start by taking the first step of your plan and start working on it.

Step 9 - Overcoming adversity these are the road blocks that stop us along the way. The key is to keep working away this may mean taking a different approach to accomplish your goal.

Now get busy using this in your life.

Why We Fail and How to Overcome it For Good - The Cycle of Failure and How to Break It

2009-05-13T23:42:00.000+08:00

Why do people fail at things? Why do some people have a continual pattern of failure? What brings it about and how does it start? Is there a pattern that once identified can be broken or changed so that a life of excellence and results can be discovered?

Thankfully the answer is yes!

We search for success or excellence and when we don't achieve it we need to look at the why and what the reasons are? If we do not identify the core reasons we are doomed to keep repeating them. This is just plain sense. Unless you remove the causes then the results will be the same.

Lets start off by understanding the one and only key ingredient for success, while many people claim they have the "one" thing often that is the one thing that is or was true for them. There is one universal ingredient that is the one and only thing for everybody. In fact without this thing your success will elude you. It is the glue that surrounds all the other things and it you remove this then failure is certain.

What is excellence? Definitions are boundless on this one topic. I consider excellence to be the process of constant improvement and getting better than your best. Each and every one of us has gifts, talents, skills and attributes that are truly unique. It doesn't matter who you compare yourself to on this planet I guarantee there is a least one thing that you are better at than that person. Think about it? Compare yourself to ANYBODY, you may be a better athlete, or better at poetry, sewing, speaking, dancing, caring, listening, piano player etc, you may be a better parent, friends or relative. If you look hard enough and not usually for long you will find that uniqueness often a number of uniqueness. That is your gift. If fact you have one thing at least that nobody else has and nobody else can bring to this world. Only you have it.

In running seminars and teaching Australian how to beat procrastination for over 19 years many people are amazed at the strengths and talents that really do have once they do a little bit of self analysis.

So excellence is about drawing out this talent and making it better. It is not a competition thing that we compare ourselves with others. It is about being better than you have been before. It is about being the best YOU that you can be.

In my seminars I often ask professional groups of people what does it take to succeed? I then ask... What are the specific activities, attributes, skills, patterns or formulas required to achieve a level of excellence. Time and time again without fail people can tell me with ease what it takes to get a result. They can tell me the amount of prospecting, sales conversions, ratios, percentages, skills, quantities and qualities. Usually a fairly comprehensive list. I then conclude by asking them if this is what it takes then what level of excellence are you in terms of 0 to 100%?, often the range is between 30 and 60 % of excellence. I point out that it is not knowledge that is required because everybody just knew what it takes and the results are not theirs yet. Knowledge is not the solution, it is the one missing ingredient and that ingredient is ACTION. It is in the doing that excellence is achieved. People of excellence will step up to the plate every day. They KNOW what to do. They know how to do it and actually go about DOING it. Excellence is knowledge in action.

So why do people procrastinate and not take action. The answer lies firstly in the cycle of failure that many people experience. In fact any time we fail we can usually see this cycle taking hold of the process.

When we start something wether it be, a new job, new project, business, new anything we start off in the first stage which is the EXCITED stage. This is the stage when we are going up. We have a go forward go up mentality we focus on the good things we don't listen to the negative people we are motivated and we are off and running. (Like starting a gym for the for the first time or setting a new years resolution) There is no doubt this is a powerful stage we start to get things done.

Soon afterwards we get into the next phase and this is how we start to fail. We tamper off in our excitement and we move into the AVOIDANCE BEHAVIOUR stage. Here we delay, defer, and put things off to another time. At this point we have a significant choice to make. We can both recognise this stage and go back to what excited us in the first place or we can keep going avoiding the behaviour. If we keep going we start to go downhill in the cycle by entering into the 3rd stage which is the EXCUSES stage. Here we make all sorts of excuses for why we are not doing. Most people have a favourite excuse for not taking action. The one excuse I have heard the most especially from my 25 years of management is "not enough time". Time is an interesting one. People complain about not having enough time when they all the time there is ! Each of us has 24 hours no more, no less. It is what we DO (that doing word again) with our time that determines how effective we are.

After we have given enough excuses and we have not succeeded we totally fail when we in the final stage and that is the BLAME stage. We blame everything and every one as to why we did not perform. It becomes the governments fault the company, the customers, the suppliers, the staff, all sorts of things. We start doing the finger pointing and when we do that have you noticed you have three fingers pointing back to yourself. Yes that is correct. We go around blaming others for action and responsibilities we should have taken ourselves. When you think about it blame is a fairly immature thing to do as well. You want power in your life? Take ownership and responsibility. If it is going to be it is up to me!

So that's the cycle of failure. Everybody fails from time to time that is how we learn what's not ok is the person who is born and dies and spends their entire life get excited about things avoiding the behaviour to get the things accomplished and then making a journey of excuses and blame, they do it over and over time and time again. Their life becomes a life of excited starts and incomplete finishes. Failure is not a person it is simply and event. Vince Lombardi famous coach once said "Failure is not getting knocked down it is not getting up again "You can get up one more time, learn, do more, be better.

Why Do People Feel The Need To Struggle?

2009-05-13T23:27:00.001+08:00

Why is struggle a part of life? Any time you try anything difficult or new, you are bound to have some type of struggle. Exercise requires struggle. Changing an opinion, belief, expectation or attitude requires struggle. Anytime you attempt growth in any area of your life, you will struggle. Why is it, then, that some people seem to go through life with no apparent struggle, while others seem to attract it into their life with every breath? I have known struggle in every area of my life: my career, my relationships, my financial life and my willingness to let go and surrender.

Struggle is not in our genes, but in our reaction to life and in our minds. It is not in our environment, but in our expectations. It is not in the circumstances or people in our lives, but in our desires.

The problem here is that each of us is trying to develop, design and live our ideal life, but we don’t know what it will or should look like. We are trying to move into a happy and successful future, but we don’t seem to know how to create it. We all want something more, better or less, in some area of our life, but are at a loss as to why we don’t or can’t have it.

Struggle is not necessary in our life. It is not required. Please note - I am not including the following in any definition of struggle: effort, failure, problems, risks, losses, broken dreams, lost loves, disappointment, stress, etc.

Struggle is our reaction to life: its successes, frustrations, achievements, failures and challenges. The level of struggle for each of us is defined by each of us in our own way using our own yardstick. I have spent many hours contemplating why I have often lived a life of struggle. My answer is: I wanted it and needed it to move me forward. Seems like a strange attitude I know, but it is the best I have come up with so far. Maybe when my life is struggle-free, I will have a better answer, but until then I seem to be cursed with this need to fight life every step of the way. I am discovering that when I release my attachments - the struggle ends.

How about you? What are you struggling with today? In this life? In your career or business? Your relationships? Once you let it go and surrender - the struggle seems to end. Try it, it might work for you, too. And you just might be happier and more successful in the process!

N E V E R G I V E U P

2009-05-13T23:19:00.001+08:00

Don't give up now, Benitez urges Reds

2009-05-13T23:08:00.002+08:00

Rafael Benitez has challenged his Liverpool players to keep believing that they can pip Manchester United at the wire in the Premier League title race.

The Reds travel to West Ham on Saturday night (Australian time) aiming to keep the pressure on United with a victory that will lift them back to the top of the table ahead of their rivals' derby clash with Manchester City 24 hours later.

United need seven points from their final four games to be sure of the title and few now expect them to falter.

But Benitez is determined his side will not do the champions any favours.

"We must keep winning, keep pushing and see what happens," the Spaniard said. "Maybe, hopefully, City can do us a favour. But there is nothing we can do about that match, only ours."

Benitez added: "We have to believe. We have done well, we have been able to win a lot of games right at the end which shows our fitness. We have gained a lot of experience and the spirit has been fantastic among the players.

"We will push right until the end. Even that will be of use to us in the future, but we still must believe we can do something this season, not wait for next."

Benitez will have Fernando Torres and Javier Mascherano back from injury but must do without Xabi Alonso, who has an ankle problem following Joey Barton's red card challenge in the win over Newcastle last weekend.

And he acknowledged that West Ham will be tough opponents following an upturn in their fortunes under rookie manager Gianfranco Zola.

"West Ham will be difficult," Benitez added. "Zola is doing a good job, they are confident and playing well. Zola was a fantastic player and now he is showing he can be a fine manager, he is doing a good job there.

"It was a little difficult for him at the start, it always is when a new manager takes over. But he is clever, he knows the league and what to do.

"But we know we have to win. A point is not good enough so the message is very clear to my players, win and increase the pressure ahead of United's game on Sunday."

West Ham are in the hunt for a seventh-placed finish that will earn a place in next season's Europa League and Zola is determined to earn his first win against one of the league's top four clubs as a manager.

"We played Manchester United at home and Chelsea at home and we went very close and were unlucky. We keep trying as we lost against those teams but we learned a lot from them and we are confident that Saturday is going to be a different game.

"It is another opportunity for us to beat a top team and also it has got double the value that if we win this game we have a great chance to get into Europe."

Never Give Up by Winston Churcill

2009-05-13T23:01:00.001+08:00

Winston Churchill failed sixth grade. He was
subsequently defeated in every election for public office until he became Prime
Minister at the age of 62. He later wrote, "Never give in, never give in, never,
never, never, never - in nothing, great or small, large or petty - never give in
except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never, Never, Never, Never give
up." (his capitals, mind you)

Introduction Orator Sir Winston Churchill

2009-05-13T22:57:00.003+08:00

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, KG, OM, CH, TD, FRS, PC (Can) (30 November 1874 –24 January 1965) was a British politician known chiefly for his leadership of the United Kingdom during World War II. He served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1955. A noted statesman and orator, Churchill was also an officer in the British Army, a historian, a Nobel Prize-winning writer, and an artist.

During his army career, Churchill saw action in India, in the Sudan and the Second Boer War. He gained fame and notoriety as a war correspondent and through contemporary books he wrote describing the campaigns. He also served briefly in the British Army on the Western Front in World War I, commanding the 6th Battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers.

At the forefront of the political scene for almost fifty years, he held many political and cabinet positions. Before the First World War, he served as President of the Board of Trade, Home Secretary and First Lord of the Admiralty as part of the Asquith Liberal government. During the war he continued as First Lord of the Admiralty until the disastrous Battle of Gallipoli caused his departure from government. He returned as Minister of Munitions, Secretary of State for War and Secretary of State for Air. In the interwar years, he served as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Conservative government.

After the outbreak of the Second World War, Churchill was again appointed First Lord of the Admiralty. Following the resignation of Neville Chamberlain on 10 May 1940, he became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and led Britain to victory against the Axis powers. Churchill was always noted for his speeches, which became a great inspiration to the British people and embattled Allied forces.

After losing the 1945 election, he became Leader of the Opposition. In 1951, he again became Prime Minister before finally retiring in 1955. Upon his death the Queen granted him the honour of a state funeral, which saw one of the largest assemblies of statesmen in the world.

JOSH GROBAN LYRICS You Are Loved (Don't Give Up)

2009-05-13T22:48:00.000+08:00

Don't give up
It's just the weight of the world
When you're heart's heavy
I...I will lift it for you

Don't give up
Because you want to be heard
If silence keeps you
I...I will break it for you

Everybody wants to be understood
Well I can hear you
Everybody wants to be loved
Don't give up
Because you are loved

Don't give up
It's just the hurt that you hide
When you lost inside
I...I will be there to find you

Don't give up
Because you want to burn bright
If darkness blinds you
I...I will shine to guide you

Everybody wants to be understood
Well I can hear you
Everybody wants to be loved
Don't give up
Because you are loved

You are loved
Don't give up
It's just the weight of the world
Don't give up
Every one is to be heard
You are loved

Don't Give Up (Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush song)

2009-05-13T22:45:00.001+08:00

"Don't Give Up" is a duet recorded by Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush for Gabriel's album So. The single version spent eleven weeks in the UK Top 75 chart in 1986, peaking at number nine. It describes the despair of a man who feels that the economic system has no place for him, and the support and wise counsel sung in the refrain by Bush. There were two videos created for this song by Godley & Creme. The first consisted of a single take of the singers in an embrace, as the sun enters total eclipse and re-emerges. The second featured Gabriel and Bush's faces superimposed over film of a town and its people in disrepair.

They Didn't Give Up

2009-05-13T00:41:00.000+08:00

As a
young man, Abraham Lincoln went to war a captain
and returned a private. Afterwards, he was a failure as a businessman. As a
lawyer in Springfield, he was too impractical and temperamental to be a success.
He turned to politics and was defeated in his first try for the legislature,
again defeated in his first attempt to be nominated for congress, defeated in
his application to be commissioner of the General Land Office, defeated in the
senatorial election of 1854, defeated in his efforts for the vice-presidency in
1856, and defeated in the senatorial election of 1858. At about that time, he
wrote in a letter to a friend, "I am now the most miserable man living. If what
I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be
one cheerful face on the earth."

Socrates was called "an immoral corrupter of youth"
and continued to corrupt even after a sentence of death was imposed on him. He
drank the hemlock and died corrupting.

Sigmund Freud was booed from the podium when he
first presented his ideas to the scientific community of Europe. He returned to
his office and kept on writing.

Robert Sternberg received a C in his first college
introductory-psychology class. His teacher commented that "there was a famous
Sternberg in psychology and it was obvious there would not be another." Three
years later Sternberg graduated with honors from Stanford University with
exceptional distinction in psychology, summa cum laude, and Phi Beta Kappa. In
2002, he became President of the American Psychological Association.

Charles Darwin gave up a medical career and was
told by his father, "You care for nothing but shooting, dogs and rat catching."
In his autobiography, Darwin wrote, "I was considered by all my masters and my
father, a very ordinary boy, rather below the common standard of intellect."
Clearly, he evolved.

Thomas Edison's teachers said he was "too stupid to
learn anything." He was fired from his first two jobs for being
"non-productive." As an inventor, Edison made 1,000 unsuccessful attempts at
inventing the light bulb. When a reporter asked, "How did it feel to fail 1,000
times?" Edison replied, "I didn’t fail 1,000 times. The light bulb was an
invention with 1,000 steps."

Why Money Doesn’t Buy Happiness

2009-05-11T19:28:00.002+08:00

All in all, it was probably a mistake to look for the answer to the eternal question—"Does money buy happiness?"—from people who practice what's called the dismal science. For when economists tackled the question, they started from the observation that when people put something up for sale they try to get as much for it as they can, and when people buy something they try to pay as little for it as they can. Both sides in the transaction, the economists noticed, are therefore behaving as if they would be more satisfied (happier, dare we say) if they wound up receiving more money (the seller) or holding on to more money (the buyer). Hence, more money must be better than less, and the only way more of something can be better than less of it is if it brings you greater contentment. The economists' conclusion: the more money you have, the happier you must be.

Depressed debutantes, suicidal CEOs, miserable magnates and other unhappy rich folks aren't the only ones giving the lie to this. "Psychologists have spent decades studying the relation between wealth and happiness," writes Harvard University psychologist Daniel Gilbert in his best-selling "Stumbling on Happiness," "and they have generally concluded that wealth increases human happiness when it lifts people out of abject poverty and into the middle class but that it does little to increase happiness thereafter."

That flies in the face of intuition, not to mention economic theory. According to standard economics, the most important commodity you can buy with additional wealth is choice. If you have $20 in your pocket, you can decide between steak and peanut butter for dinner, but if you have only $1 you'd better hope you already have a jar of jelly at home. Additional wealth also lets you satisfy additional needs and wants, and the more of those you satisfy the happier you are supposed to be.

The trouble is, choice is not all it's cracked up to be. Studies show that people like selecting from among maybe half a dozen kinds of pasta at the grocery store but find 27 choices overwhelming, leaving them chronically on edge that they could have chosen a better one than they did. And wants, which are nice to be able to afford, have a bad habit of becoming needs (iPod, anyone?), of which an advertising- and media-saturated culture create endless numbers. Satisfying needs brings less emotional well-being than satisfying wants.

The nonlinear nature of how much happiness money can buy—lots more happiness when it moves you out of penury and into middle-class comfort, hardly any more when it lifts you from millionaire to decamillionaire—comes through clearly in global surveys that ask people how content they feel with their lives. In a typical survey people are asked to rank their sense of well-being or happiness on a scale of 1 to 7, where 1 means "not at all satisfied with my life" and 7 means "completely satisfied." Of the American multimillionaires who responded, the average happiness score was 5.8. Homeless people in Calcutta came in at 2.9. But before you assume that money does buy happiness after all, consider who else rated themselves around 5.8: the Inuit of northern Greenland, who do not exactly lead a life of luxury, and the cattle-herding Masai of Kenya, whose dung huts have no electricity or running water. And proving Gilbert's point about money buying happiness only when it lifts you out of abject poverty, slum dwellers in Calcutta—one economic rung above the homeless—rate themselves at 4.6.

Studies tracking changes in a population's reported level of happiness over time have also dealt a death blow to the money-buys-happiness claim. Since World War II the gross domestic product per capita has tripled in the United States. But people's sense of well-being, as measured by surveys asking some variation of "Overall, how satisfied are you with your life?," has barely budged. Japan has had an even more meteoric rise in GDP per capita since its postwar misery, but measures of national happiness have been flat, as they have also been in Western Europe during its long postwar boom, according to social psychologist Ruut Veenhoven of Erasmus University in Rotterdam. A 2004 analysis of more than 150 studies on wealth and happiness concluded that "economic indicators have glaring shortcomings" as approximations of well-being across nations, wrote Ed Diener of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and Martin E. P. Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania. "Although economic output has risen steeply over the past decades, there has been no rise in life satisfaction … and there has been a substantial increase in depression and distrust."

That's partly because in an expanding economy, in which former luxuries such as washing machines become necessities, the newly affluent don't feel the same joy in having a machine do the laundry that their grandparents, suddenly freed from washboards, did. They just take the Maytag for granted. "Americans who earn $50,000 per year are much happier than those who earn $10,000 per year," writes Gilbert, "but Americans who earn $5 million per year are not much happier than those who earn $100,000 per year." Another reason is that an expanding paycheck, especially in an expanding economy, produces expanding aspirations and a sense that there is always one more cool thing out there that you absolutely have to have. "Economic success falls short as a measure of well-being, in part because materialism can negatively influence well-being," Diener and Seligman conclude.

If money doesn't buy happiness, what does? Grandma was right when she told you to value health and friends, not money and stuff. Or as Diener and Seligman put it, once your basic needs are met "differences in well-being are less frequently due to income, and are more frequently due to factors such as social relationships and enjoyment at work." Other researchers add fulfillment, a sense that life has meaning, belonging to civic and other groups, and living in a democracy that respects individual rights and the rule of law. If a nation wants to increase its population's sense of well-being, says Veenhoven, it should make "less investment in economic growth and more in policies that promote good governance, liberties, democracy, trust and public safety."

(Curiously, although money doesn't buy happiness, happiness can buy money. Young people who describe themselves as happy typically earn higher incomes, years later, than those who said they were unhappy. It seems that a sense of well-being can make you more productive and more likely to show initiative and other traits that lead to a higher income. Contented people are also more likely to marry and stay married, as well as to be healthy, both of which increase happiness.)

If more money doesn't buy more happiness, then the behavior of most Americans looks downright insane, as we work harder and longer, decade after decade, to fatten our W-2s. But what is insane for an individual is crucial for a national economy—that is, ever more growth and consumption. Gilbert again: "Economies can blossom and grow only if people are deluded into believing that the production of wealth will make them happy … Economies thrive when individuals strive, but because individuals will strive only for their own happiness, it is essential that they mistakenly believe that producing and consuming are routes to personal well-being." In other words, if you want to do your part for your country's economy, forget all of the above about money not buying happiness.

Some Happiness Expressions

2009-05-11T19:18:00.005+08:00

Roma's Players Expression

Obama's Expression

People in Kenya

Happiness Expression

Rossi The Champion

The Midlife Happiness Crisis

2009-05-11T17:59:00.005+08:00

Do people get happier as they age?

Volumes of academic research measure the determinants of individual economic well-being—wages, income, and wealth. That is because money is supposed to buy not only necessities but also happiness, Except that the relationship between money and happiness turns out to be complex. People with higher incomes today report higher levels of happiness than their poorer contemporaries. At the same time, people today are far richer than earlier generations, but they're not happier than those who came before them. In light of such wrinkles, a growing cadre of economists has cut out the money middleman and moved to studying happiness directly. The latest installment in this genre is a new study by economists David Blanchflower of Dartmouth and Andrew Oswald of Warwick. They document how happiness evolves as people age. While income and wealth tend to rise steadily over the life cycle, peaking around retirement, happiness follows a U-shaped age pattern.

The authors' data come from large-scale surveys. The General Social Survey asks Americans to rate their happiness level on a three-point scale, with "very happy" a three, "pretty happy" a two, and "not too happy" a one. The average happiness score in the United States is 2.2. The data, covering people older than 16, come from the years 1974 through 2004 and include about 20,000 men and 25,000 women. Across the Atlantic, the Eurobarometer offers a similar four-point scale (very satisfied, fairly satisfied, not very satisfied, not at all satisfied). The average happiness score in Europe is three. The data include about 400,000 men and women in 11 European countries, from 1975 to 1998.

Analyzing data from these surveys, Blanchflower and Oswald found that for both men and women in the United States and throughout Europe, happiness starts off relatively high in early adulthood, then falls, bottoming out on average around age 45, and then rises after that year and on into old age.

In this study (as in others), people are happier than their poorer counterparts if they have more income. How does the effect of income on happiness compare with the age effect? In the United States, the steady decline in happiness from age 16 to age 45 has an effect that's larger than a 50 percent reduction in income—that is, happiness varies more as people get older than it does if you compare significantly richer people to poorer ones. And, equivalently, the 15-year upswing in happiness that follows age 45 is stronger than the upswing that tracks doubling of income. For Europeans, the age-based happiness rise that's equivalent to the effect of doubling income occurs between ages 35 and 70.

The U-shaped happiness pattern is not a completely new finding. But past researchers couldn't tell whether 55-year-olds were happier than 45-year-olds in a given year because they'd aged or because they were born to a sunnier generation. This study gets around this problem by combining data on people of different ages at different points in time over a quarter-century. The authors can compare not only 55- and 45-year-olds today, but also 55-year-olds today to people who were 45 a decade ago. And when they account for when people were born, the U-shaped happiness pattern remains.

The authors also find that over the last century, Americans, both men and women, have gotten steadily—and hugely—less happy. The difference in happiness of men between men of my generation, born in the 1960s, and my father's generation, born in the 1920s, is the same as the effect of a tenfold difference in income. In other words, if my father had little money compared to his contemporaries and I have lots of money compared to mine, I can still expect to be less happy. Here, curiously, the European pattern diverges. Happiness falls for the birth years from 1900 to about 1950, and generations born on the continent since World War II have gotten successively happier.

So, why does happiness start strong, dip with middle age, and then revive among the elderly? The authors—they're economists, after all—can do little more than speculate about the causes of the midlife happiness crisis. They propose that people come to understand their strengths and weaknesses and "in mid-life quell the infeasible aspirations of their youth." Whatever the cause, even if middle-aged Americans are less happy than their parents and grandparents, they have something to look forward to. Besides senility and death, that is.

Happiness {Scientific and psychological views}

2009-05-11T17:35:00.002+08:00
Biological approach

The evolutionary perspective offers an alternative approach to understand what happiness or quality of life is about. Briefly, the questions to be answered are: What features are included in the brain that allows humans to distinguish between positive and negative states of mind, and how do these features improve the survivability of humans? Answering these questions points towards an understanding of what happiness is about and how to best exploit the capacities of the brain with which humans are endowed. The perspective is presented in detail by the evolutionary biologist Bjørn Grinde in his book Darwinian Happiness, as well as in a more formal way.

Positive psychology
Martin Seligman asserts that "pleasures of the moment" typically involve external stimulus. Above, A man laughs as he attempts to balance three birds on himself.

In his book Authentic Happiness, Martin Seligman, one of the founders of positive psychology, describes happiness as consisting of "positive emotions" and "positive activities". He further categorizes emotions related to the past, present and future. Positive emotions relating to the past include satisfaction, contentment, pride and serenity. Positive emotions relating to the future include optimism, hope and trust. Positive emotions about the present are divided into two categories: pleasure and gratifications. The bodily and higher pleasures are "pleasures of the moment" and usually involve some external stimulus.

Gratifications involve full engagement, flow, elimination of self-consciousness, and blocking of felt emotions. But when a gratification comes to an end then positive emotions will be felt. Gratifications can be obtained or increased by developing signature strengths and virtues. Authenticity is the derivation of gratification and positive emotions from exercising signature strengths. The good life comes from using signature strengths to obtain abundant gratification in, for example, enjoying work and creative activities. The most profound sense of happiness is experienced through the meaningful life, achieved if one exercises one's unique strengths and virtues in a purpose greater than one's own immediate goals.

Norman Cousins developed a recovery program incorporating megadoses of Vitamin C, along with a positive attitude, love, faith, hope, and laughter induced by Marx Brothers films. "I made the joyous discovery that ten minutes of genuine belly laughter had an anesthetic effect and would give me at least two hours of pain-free sleep," he reported. "When the pain-killing effect of the laughter wore off, we would switch on the motion picture projector again and not infrequently, it would lead to another pain-free interval." He wrote about these experiences in several books.

Philosophical views

The Chinese Confucian thinker Mencius, who 2300 years ago sought to give advice to the ruthless political leaders of the warring states period, was convinced that the mind played a mediating role between the "lesser self" (the physiological self) and the "greater self" (the moral self) and that getting the priorities right between these two would lead to sagehood. He argued that if we did not feel satisfaction or pleasure in nourishing one's "vital force" with "righteous deeds", that force would shrivel up (Mencius,6A:15 2A:2). More specifically, he mentions the experience of intoxicating joy if one celebrates the practice of the great virtues, especially through music.

About one hundred years later, the Hindu thinker Patanjali, author of the Yoga Sutras, wrote quite exhaustively on the psychological and ontological roots of bliss.

In the Nicomachean Ethics, written in 350 B.C.E., Aristotle stated that happiness is the only emotion that humans desire for its own sake. He observed that men sought riches, or honor, or health, not for their own sake but in order to be happy. Note that eudaimonia, the term we translate as "happiness", is for Aristotle an activity rather than an emotion or a state. Happiness is characteristic of a good life, that is, a life in which a man or woman fulfills human nature in an excellent way. People have a set of purposes which are typically human: they belong to our nature. The happy person is virtuous, meaning he or she has outstanding abilities and emotional tendencies which allow him or her to fulfill our common human ends. For Aristotle, then, happiness is "the virtuous activity of the soul in accordance with reason": happiness is the practice of virtue.

Many ethicists make arguments for how humans should behave, either individually or collectively, based on the resulting happiness of such behavior. Utilitarians, such as John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham, advocated the greatest happiness principle as a guide for ethical behavior.

Happiness in social networks

2009-05-11T16:58:00.001+08:00

A widely-publicized study from 2008 in the British Medical Journal reported that happiness in social networks may spread from person to person. Researchers followed nearly 5000 individuals for 20 years in the long-standing Framingham Heart Study and found clusters of happiness and unhappiness that spread up to 3 degrees of separation on average. Happiness tended to spread through close relationships like friends, siblings, spouses, and next-door neighbors, and the researchers reported that happiness spread more consistently than unhappiness through the network. Moreover, the structure of the social network appeared to have an impact on happiness, as people who were very central (with many friends and friends of friends) were significantly more likely to be happy than those on the periphery of the network. Overall, the results suggest that happiness might spread through a population like a virus.

Happiness : Correlate with religious involvement

2009-05-11T16:32:00.003+08:00
There is now extensive research suggesting that religious people are happier and less stressed. Surveys by Gallup, the National Opinion Research Center and the Pew Organization conclude that spiritually committed people are twice as likely to report being "very happy" than the least religiously committed people. An analysis of over 200 social studies contends that "high religiousness predicts a lower risk of depression and drug abuse and fewer suicide attempts, and more reports of satisfaction with sex life and a sense of well-being," and a review of 498 studies published in peer-reviewed journals concluded that a large majority of them showed a positive correlation between religious commitment and higher levels of perceived well-being and self-esteem and lower levels of hypertension, depression, and clinical delinquency. Studies by Keith Ward show that overall religion is a positive contributor to mental health, and a meta-analysis of 34 recent studies published between 1990 and 2001 also found that religiosity has a salutary relationship with psychological adjustment, being related to less psychological distress, more life satisfaction, and better self-actualization.[14] Finally, a recent systematic review of 850 research papers on the topic concluded that "the majority of well-conducted studies found that higher levels of religious involvement are positively associated with indicators of psychological well-being (life satisfaction, happiness, positive affect, and higher morale) and with less depression, suicidal thoughts and behavior, drug/alcohol use/abuse."

The individual level of happiness and religiosity correlations show up when measuring within the United States, a predominantly religious country. According to a 2007 paper by Liesbeth Snoep in the Journal of Happiness Studies, there is no significant correlation between religiosity and individual happiness in Netherlands and Denmark, countries that have lower rates of religion than the United States. When measuring between countries, the least religious industrialized countries such as in northern Europe have a much higher happiness than the most religious industrialized country, the US, so cross country comparisons on religiosity and happiness seem to show a societal level correlation of increased secularization and decreased religiosity to increased happiness. It may be simply that non-religious people are less happy in a religious country, but everyone is happier in more secular, less religious countries.

Happiness

2009-05-11T16:27:00.001+08:00

Happiness is a state of mind or feeling such as contentment, satisfaction, pleasure, or joy. A variety of philosophical, religious, psychological and biological approaches have been taken to defining happiness and identifying its sources.

Philosophers and religious thinkers have often defined happiness in terms of living a good life, or flourishing, rather than simply as an emotion. Happiness in this older sense was used to translate the Greek Eudaimonia, and is still used in virtue ethics. In everyday speech today, however, terms such as well-being or quality of life are usually used to signify the classical meaning, and happiness is reserved[citation needed] for the felt experience or experiences that philosophers historically called pleasure.

Happiness forms a central theme of Buddhist teachings, which focuses on obtaining freedom from suffering by following the Eightfold Path. In the Buddhist view, ultimate happiness is only achieved by overcoming craving in all forms. Aristotle saw happiness as "the virtuous activity of the soul in accordance with reason," or the practice of virtue. In Catholicism, the ultimate end of human existence consists in felicity, or "blessed happiness", described by the thirteenth-century philosopher-theologian Thomas Aquinas as a Beatific Vision of God's essence in the next life. One psychological approach, positive psychology, describes happiness as consisting of positive emotions and positive activities.

While direct measurement of happiness is difficult, tools such as The Oxford Happiness Inventory have been developed by researchers. Physiological correlates to happiness can be measured through a variety of techniques, and survey research can be based on self-reported happiness levels.

Research has identified a number of correlates with happiness. These include religious involvement, parenthood, marital status, age, income and proximity to other happy people. Happiness economics suggests that measures of public happiness should be used to supplement more traditional economic measures when evaluating the success of public policy.

How to Honestly Say I Love You

2009-05-10T13:04:00.004+08:00
by Adi Akmal

These three words are powerful when we use it properly in our relationships. They can evoke feelings of joy, desire, longing, and a sense of acceptance. However, these magical words are also abused and misused by a lot of people. Saying “I love you” in an honest way not only enhances the overall quality of our relationships, it also help us become better medium of love to others. Here are few suggestions how to say “I love you” honestly:

# Step 1
Say “I love you” and radiate the love in your eyes. This means each time you say it, look at the person who is the recipient of your words and mean what you say. As one popular song by Olivia Newton-John goes, “I love you, I honestly love you. You don’t have to answer, I see it in your eyes”. In a person’s eyes, one can tell if love is there or not.

# Step 2
Say “I love you” even if your heart is filled with pain. This is another true test of the presence of love in your heart. When love and pain are competing and you can still utter words of love to someone, you are proving the depth of your feelings.

# Step 3
Say “I love you” with actions. Your words are hollow if you keep repeating them without doing anything to show your love. Jesus is the greatest example when He said He loves mankind and died for our sins. You may never equal what He did, but you can come up with something to show you genuinely love the other person not just through words.

# Step 4
Say “I love you” in a loving tone. Even if you say these words in different languages, the overall feel how you express it in words can give a clue to your honesty. No matter how fancy you express your love thru poems, verses, love letter, etc., it is when you speak “I love you” with affection that counts.

How to be Honest with Others

2009-05-10T13:00:00.002+08:00
by Adi Akmal

You might say, “Well I sure do not need this How To. I am very honest and direct with everyone in my life!” Oh are you? So you have never told a “fib,” “a little white lie,” or “stretched the truth” in your entire life? You must be very unique--or lying. What you need to do is to take a sincere look at how you interact with others to determine how honest you really are with them.

# Step 1
Watch your social interaction with others over the next week and pay close attention to the “honesty meter” in your brain. Look for the any dishonest interactions you have with the people with whom you engage. See if you used: White lies, stretching the truth and/or fibs. Look at tips below for definitions of these three dishonest interactions.
# Step 2
Be honest with yourself in your self-assessment of how you interact with others. Do use white lies to avoid conflict? Do you stretch the truth so as not to get the other party upset? Do you fib so that you do not have to face something you did wrong which you do not want to admit to?
# Step 3
Clarify for yourself why you are dishonest with others. Once you identify if you have performed any of the dishonest social interaction described in Steps 1 & 2. Figure out why you were dishonest and decide if it would be better for you to be honest in the future in similar social situations.
# Step 4
Make a commitment to be more honest in the future. People around you have an inner sense and can tell when you are not being totally open, transparent and honest with them. Remember, your best job of “trying to keep a happy face” is not always accepted in the manner in which you hope it will be accepted.
# Step 5
Learn how to become more assertive in your relationships with others. This will help you tell them where you are coming from and why you feel and act with them the way you do. Being assertive will help you achieve committment to being honest and open with people.
# Step 6
Grow in the ability to be open, honest and assertive with others. Your family members, friends, work colleagues and associates will appreciate an “honest straightforward you.” They will appreciate your ability to have candor, directness and sincere feedback rather than your efforts to hide the truth so that they can be happy, content or “in the dark.”

Guiding the Gifted to Honest Work (Continuation)

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Gifted Students and Academic Dishonesty

In the discourse about honest work, gifted students have been largely ignored. They are perceived as capable, motivated learners who think independently and have little reason to plagiarize. Yet to gain a competitive advantage over their peers, especially under the pressure of applying to first-tier colleges, our best and brightest may tailor their academic performance to “doing school,” (i.e., pursuing grades, recognition, and awards as résumé builders) as opposed to learning. Under these circumstances, some students come to believe that the odds are in their favor and that getting caught is only a momentary downside. As David Callahan argues in The Cheating Culture, “When cheating becomes so pervasive that the perception is that ‘everybody does it,’ a new ethical calculus emerges.”

School Factors Contributing to Academic Dishonesty

One of the most important ways to combat academic dishonesty is to avoid assignments that lack critical thinking and inquiry learning. Library “reports” ostensibly are assigned to afford students practice doing research, writing in an academic voice, or building knowledge, but they fail in all of these objectives. Without cognitive processing and an authentic task to which the skills or content are applied, students retain little and transfer less. Thus, a report on a country, a person, or a topic that asks for regurgitation of information is recognized as a “doing school” assignment by gifted students.
If the task is superficial, gifted students respond sensibly; they do little thinking, expend the least effort possible, and take short-cuts like cut-and-paste plagiarism with the aim of getting the assignment done rather than investigating an idea or subject. For any unit or project, a teacher ought to be able to answer: What is my students’ genuine need to do this work? What larger purpose does this work serve?

Those who are interested in their subject tend to do ethical work, if they know how. Others may need explicit coaching directly related to the work they are assigned. For example, if students only practice summarizing generic passages or citing model sources in whole-class lessons, they may not be able apply this to their specific research task. For most, one inoculation is insufficient; students will need multiple experiences wrestling with attribution and paraphrasing, including opportunities to construct their own understandings, before they can go beyond copying a source into a note card and using a note card in a paper consistently.

Another common practice that contributes to plagiarism is sending home certain parts of a research paper assignment, such as note-taking and writing, using the justification that there is not enough class time or computers. For older gifted students with shaky organizational skills, this is a recipe for failure; what they need is coaching and practice with a teacher or librarian frequently checking on their notes, rough drafts, and working bibliography. For the younger gifted student who has never done a research assignment, such homework implicitly invites anxious parents to hover, help, and contribute in varying degrees. The polished results give teachers an inflated sense of their students’ capabilities and phony confirmation of their own effectiveness. The final product (which, at the very least, should include a citation for the hard-working parents) is a flawless game plan for future plagiarized essays in which help and ideas will be disguised and unattributed.

Any significant research assignment is always an opportunity to teach basic skills such as comprehension and writing. If students don’t understand what they are reading, they cannot chunk the text, extract the essential ideas, and paraphrase it in their own words. The result is either a patchwork of unattributed quotes or thinly disguised passages of undigested reading material. Of course, all gifted students are not strategic readers, and some are second-language learners. Indeed, any reader might find it difficult to unpack a dense passage of prose on a new subject. Without modeling, coaching, and scaffolding on the actual reading material, even gifted students have learned to grab a digital text, substitute words with a thesaurus, and rearrange phrases in order to fool the detection software that some schools employ to catch plagiarists.

Let’s face it—even citation isn’t easy. Many adults can remember discarding a source they had actually used for research, because they were unable to figure out how to create the citation correctly. In order to create a citation for some of the trickier database sources one must understand and implement elements from several different sections of style manuals, a tedious and frustrating process. Nor do all style handbooks provide advice for citing the newer Web 2.0 formats like wikis, audioblogs, and podcasts.

Faced with these roadblocks, educators are reluctant to take the time to teach citation as a thinking process; for the sake of expediency, they treat a works cited list as a mechanical task and grade for punctuation and capitalization. Although asking students to evaluate the quality of their sources and write critical annotations takes longer, the process helps students acquire the analytical skills needed for independent academic research.

The School Librarian as Partner

School librarians are educators who have been professionally trained to teach academic research, citation methods, and the ethical use of information. They can provide unique leadership in developing a culture of academic honesty, by conducting in-service learning for teachers and parents and educating students in daily, concrete ways about social responsibility.

In the American Association of School Librarians’ new 21st-century learning standards for school librarians, the school librarian is responsible for teaching the skills and dispositions that enable ethical behavior.

To work with school librarians, parents can volunteer to serve on a friends of the library committee, site council, or parent education committee, groups that are likely to be asked for feedback on school policies such as an honor code, plagiarism policy, or acceptable use policy. If your school already has such a document, read it carefully, then ask yourself whether the process of addressing academic dishonesty is clear and fair and whether it is focused on education rather than policing. Does it reflect a gotcha mentality based on rules to control, catch, confront, and punish plagiarists or are errant students treated as learners who make mistakes and need extra support as they become socially responsible members of an academic community?

Strategies that Foster Academic Honesty

Parents and teachers need to reframe plagiarism prevention—not as character education focused on developing personality traits—but as ethics education, considering inherently interesting dilemmas such as what is good or just, right or wrong. Every discipline wrestles with these issues: How do I judge expertise? Do evaluation metrics like tagging or voting on content on sites such as YouTube represent a new kind of social authority in a participatory culture? Why should I attribute an idea to its creator? Could scientific work flourish without replication? Is artistic creativity fundamentally an appropriating process? How might society balance an author’s intellectual-property interests with the public good of a creative commons? By encouraging students to behave ethically out of a combination of enlightened self-interest, academic pride, and social responsibility, and by raising issues that society has not resolved, we prepare our children to take their place as thoughtful and informed citizens in a democracy.

Conversations about academic honesty can involve students in writing the school’s honor code or, or if it already exists, revising both the language and the process to support learning. Students can be invited to reflect in all classes on their understanding of the goals of education and to speak frankly about their challenges to succeed and to learn.

Discussion and practice set the stage for doing honest work, which ought to include opportunities for student autonomy. In a series of interviews I’ve conducted with students about their perceptions of the research process, both third- and twelfth-graders voiced frustration about extensive whole-class instructions and micromanagement, arguing that they should be “let loose” (given some independence) to engage with a topic and complete components of a project according to their own preferences. Research shows that even the smallest choices evoke a pleasurable response and increase students’ motivation and investment in an activity, a precondition for honest work.

As your child works on a long-term school project, look for the pedagogical elements that create a climate of trust and support growth. Teachers who reinforce and value mastery-goals and honest behavior will:

* provide sufficient time for students to practice assessing the value, accuracy, and readability of information;
* explicitly teach reading strategies on the material in use by students;
* anticipate student confusion about citing and paraphrasing;
* conduct mini-lessons using difficult examples from students’ actual work,
* model and scaffold the process of learning time-management skills and self-regulation strategies; and
* conference with each student on multiple drafts of a research essay.

Adults can model the behaviors they espouse. If a parent or tutor works with a child to do homework or write an essay, an appended statement could explain exactly what kind of help was given. If a teacher adapts a lesson, the handout should cite the educator who originally developed it. If you think that this is extreme, I have a vivid memory of the district-wide furor that resulted when a middle school teacher discovered that a colleague in another grade had included his country report packet in her professional portfolio with a copyright sign next to her name!

Researchers have shown that autonomy, rich products, and problem-based learning lessen the likelihood of plagiarism. In such inquiry-based research projects, students need time to find and define problems, read, take notes, and think. These are the building blocks of original thinking and new learning. When accompanied by thoughtfully conceived use of emerging interactive Web tools, our 21st century learners have ample reason to persevere, take pride in their work, and behave ethically.

Guiding the Gifted to Honest Work

2009-05-10T12:54:00.002+08:00
By Debbie Abilock, MLS

Students will tell you that plagiarism is everywhere and, perhaps, even irrelevant. To make their case, they point to recent examples of high-profile authors, politicians, musicians, and even clergy who have used the work of others without acknowledgment. Although the penalties have sometimes been severe, students assert that these cases prove that intellectual property and copyright are unworkable and outmoded. Today’s students define authorship quite differently from their parents and teachers as they construct, produce, and collaborate with peers online. They contrast traditional publishing to the wealth of networks in which small contributions by altruistic, semi-anonymous individuals aggregate into massive projects like Wikipedia. Participatory culture has muddled the ethical distinctions between the creative commons and the rights of publishers, authors, and artists. Students may well wonder what the difference is between open source reuse and source-code plagiarism, between speech ghostwriters and ghost-authored medical studies reported in journals, and between remixes of existing songs within a new work and artistic plagiarism.

"50-85% of students say they cheat and plagiarize one or more times each year"

These issues have moved to the foreground in schools because digitized information has made it easy for students to find and copy material and for educators to identify copies. Schools are playing an increasingly sophisticated game of cat-and-mouse according to the Center for Academic Integrity; their large-scale surveys conducted over the last 18 years report that 50-85% of students say they cheat and plagiarize one or more times each year.

Although most teachers notice problems, they disagree on the seriousness of these offenses. Additionally, some educators are as confused as their students about the role of imitation in learning, what constitutes common knowledge and need not be cited, and whether careless work without attribution should be treated as deliberate plagiarism. Some school administrators have responded to academic dishonesty by instituting school-wide reviews of their ethics policies. Others blame, punish, and expel students for plagiarism, then count on fear as a future deterrent.

Some Tips to be Honest

2009-05-10T11:56:00.003+08:00

* Making promises or guarantees that you don't have the full intention of keeping is also dishonest.
* For most people, keeping secrets intended to benefit someone is not considered dishonest, as long as you're confident that the person you're keeping the secret from will completely understand when they find out. Still, it's a fuzzy line determining which secrets are dishonest—keeping a surprise birthday party under wraps is one thing; not telling a child that they are adopted or that their pet has died is trickier, and will require a personal sorting of ethics.
* We make judgments, assumptions and theories every day, but in order to be honest, it's important for us to acknowledge them as what they are: ideas about what the truth might be, not the hard truth itself. When you make a statement, try to add the phrase "In my experience..." or "Personally, I've observed that..." at the beginning, or end it with "...but that's just my observation/experience, that might not be how things are everywhere". For example: "In my experience, people who have physically demanding jobs tend to be more fit than those in office jobs, but that's just my own observation. That might not be how things are everywhere." It lets people know that you are making an observation that is limited to your situation, instead of making a blanket statement (i.e. stereotype or generalization) that isn't true.
* Keep these words of wisdom in mind:

o "Never do something you will have to lie about later. If you have to lie about it, you shouldn’t be doing it." [2]
o "Son, always tell the truth. Then you'll never have to remember what you said the last time." Sam Rayburn (1882 - 1961), quoted Washingtonian, November 1978
o "A half truth is a whole lie." Yiddish Proverb
o "Truth fears no questions." Unknown
o "The cruelest lies are often told in silence." Adlai Stevenson
o "Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive" Sir Walter Scott
* Some may find it helps to keep track of your statements to others in written form (a journal or chart of some sort). This can help you to see how many times you are honest and how many times you are dishonest. Learn from these experiences. Having a record of past situations where you were dishonest can help you to consider what can you do better in the future situations. Visualize how it will be if you are honest and then let move forward confidently!

How To Be Honest

2009-05-10T11:46:00.002+08:00

It's been said that honesty is the best policy. It sounds like the simplest thing in the world; but being truly honest with others and with yourself can be a real challenge. Political correctness, being sensitive of other people's feelings, and facing uncomfortable truths about yourself usually requires lots of patience, vigilance and hard work.
1. Understand the workings of dishonesty. Most of us learned to be dishonest as children. The process often began with the realization that different behaviors result in different outcomes. For example, saying certain things (or not saying certain things) garnered desirable approval and praise, or the undesirable disapproval and censure, if not punishment. Indulgence in dishonest behavior to get desired results was just a small step away. With time the thought processes behind such actions get so entrenched in our subconscious mind that one is not even aware of them. A time comes when one loses the capacity to know when and where to draw the line and how negatively does dishonesty affect our lives (see Warnings below). Dishonesty often becomes a tool to:[1]

* Pretend that there is nothing wrong with us
* Shift blame to others
* Avoid embarrassment
* Distract ourselves
* Minimize conflict
* Avoid responsibility or work
2. 'Fess up. Be willing to address issues where you have been less than honest in the past, whether you took a cookie and then denied it, or blatantly lied about whose fault an automobile accident was. While reviewing your past transgressions can create discomfort and guilt, recognizing where you have been dishonest in the past can help you identify patterns and stop them from continuing.

* If you feel guilty for having been dishonest in the past, apologize to the person you lied to and/or find a creative way to make things right. For example, if you kept money that you knew wasn't yours and didn't make a good faith effort to return it to its owner, make an equivalent or greater donation to charity. If you've lied to a person who plays an important role in your life (a significant other, relative, or friend) the best (but most difficult) thing to do is come clean.
* List the areas where you may have a weakness. It may be as simple as a tendency to make up excuses for failures, or as complicated as a penchant for stealing. Remember that dishonesty is rooted in fear, so you must look for and face those fears. By listing areas where you have a problem, and then working to deal with them, you can consciously battle these habits. If you find yourself lying because you fear disapproval from someone, for example, perhaps you need to learn how to stop being a people pleaser and be yourself. Most importantly, admit your errors so that you can forgive yourself and use those experiences to reinforce your determination to do better. You can't fix what you don't acknowledge as a problem.
3. Think honestly. This may sound silly, but if you don't think honestly, you won't BE honest. Prejudices and preconceived ideas can make it difficult to distinguish what the truth really is. Don't take things at face value. When you read, see, or hear something, don't make assumptions. Offer the benefit of the doubt, and be skeptical if necessary. When you make a commitment to communicating and understanding the truth, it can be humbling to realize that most of what we think we know is actually just based on assumptions rather than facts. Keep in mind a Jewish proverb: "What you don't see with your eyes, don't witness with your mouth."
4. Practice being honest on the simple things. This is especially important in situations where "coloring" the facts would make no difference in the world, which covers a good bit of life (from speaking the truth, to avoiding simple thoughtless acts like picking up someone's pencil or grabbing an apple off the neighbor's tree to snack on without thinking about it). Abraham Lincoln became famous for going to great lengths to return a few cents that did not belong to him, hence the nickname "Honest Abe". By applying honesty to the little things, you will get in the habit of being honest in general.
5. Exercise tact. We all know that being literally honest can hurt feelings and turn friendships sour. It can also be misinterpreted as criticism or a lack of support. It's very tempting to tell a "white lie" when dealing with sensitive loved ones (especially children), but you can still be honest by being creative in how you express the truth.

* Emphasize the positive. Shift the focus away from what, in all honesty, you think is negative. Instead of saying "No, I don't think you look good in those pants" say "They're not as flattering as the black dress—that dress really looks amazing on you. Have you tried it on with those stockings you wore to my cousin's wedding last year?"
* You have the right to remain silent. If you're pushed into a corner and don't know how to respond, say "Can we talk about this another time?" or "I really don't feel comfortable talking about this. You should really address this with..." Don't say "I don't know" if you really do know—it can come back to bite you in the rear later on. The person might catch on and realize that you know something, and they might get pushy. Repeat yourself and leave the conversation as quickly as possible.
* When all else fails, be honest—but gently. Wrap the potentially hurtful truth in appreciation, praise, and, if applicable, affection.
6. Find a balance between full disclosure and privacy. Just because you're honest doesn't mean you have to air out all of your (or anybody else's) business. There are some things that we don't talk about because it's not information that the person asking may be entitled to. On the other hand, withholding information that you know should be disclosed is lying by omission. For instance, not telling a romantic partner that you have a child or that you've been married in the past, for example, is objectionable by most. Deciding what information a person should or should not know is a personal decision. Just because you believe a person is better off not knowing something doesn't mean you're acting in their best interest by hiding that information. Follow your gut, and put yourself in that person's position: "If I was in their shoes, would I rightfully feel betrayed if this information wasn't shared with me at an appropriate time?"
7. Remember that being honest isn't easy. At its core, being honest is difficult because it makes us vulnerable. It shows people who we really are and that we make mistakes, which gives them a chance to criticize and reject in a more hurtful way than if we'd hidden the truth or lied to begin with. And sometimes, the truth just hurts. But, honesty develops character, as well as credibility and trust, all of which are the building blocks of high self-esteem and healthy relationships. Being honest isn't a goal that you check off a list—it's an ongoing process that will both challenge and benefit you throughout your life. Nothing is as liberating as having nothing to hide.
8. Remember that life is finite. So as long as you live be honest and hold your head high.

Honesty

2009-05-10T10:30:00.001+08:00
Honesty is the value of speaking truth and creating trust in minds of others. This includes all varieties of communication, both verbal and non-verbal. Honesty implies a lack of deceit. A statement can be strictly true and still be dishonest if the intention of the statement is to deceive its audience. Similarly, a falsehood can be spoken honestly if the speaker actually believes it to be true.

Honesty is typically considered virtuous behavior, and has strong positive connotations in most situations. A principal reason for this may be that honesty simplifies communication, in that honest statements can be trusted at face value, not necessarily as true, but as genuinely believed. Additionally, honesty helps to form bonds of trust in human relationships.

Conversely, dishonesty can be defined simply as behavior that is performed with intent to deceive. Lying, lying by omission, fraud, and plagiarism are all examples of this sort of behavior. Other examples can be doing one thing and telling the other, as if you are hiding something.

While there are a great many moral systems, generally speaking, honesty is considered moral and dishonesty is considered immoral. There are several exceptions, such as hedonism, which values honesty only insofar as it improves ones own sense of pleasure, and moral nihilism, which denies the existence of objective morality outright. Additionally, even in moral systems which approve in general of honesty over dishonesty, there are situations in which dishonesty may be preferable. A common example is a "white lie", a lie which is told in a situation where telling the truth would have served no purpose and would have caused pain. While they are dishonest, the motivation behind the deception is the avoidance of suffering, rather than personal gain or the evasion of responsibility common in many other forms of dishonesty, and so white lies often are viewed, if not as completely moral, then at least less immoral than other types of lies.

Honesty can simply be defined as refusal to lie, cheat, and steal in any way. Honesty should not be confused with truth.

Struggle, Pain, and Happiness/Patience

2009-05-09T20:30:00.001+08:00

I am sitting on my comfortable orange reclining chair, in front of my computer screen, which is situated in my room. The desk that holds the computer is covered with books, and all the luxuries one can ask for. As a coffee mug continues to occupy a section of my desk for the past few days, it stares at me as I begin to write this article about struggling and the pain of such struggle. The irony is evident. But sometimes irony is the best way to realize the importance of something.

We live in the age of popular culture, the age where being 'cool' (ex. Amer Iqbal) or being a 'geek' (ex. Bill Gates) are both in. Even though the two sorts of people are totally contradictory, they both hold the status of being 'in'. The culture of immediate gratification, and immediate desire. Almost anything material we want can be gained through the touch of a button. When we wish for entertainment we can go to any screen, be it of a television or a computer, and be satisfied. When we desire information, we can click our 'mouse' and receive the information in a few seconds. If the information takes more than a few seconds, then we immediately get angry at the speed of the computer, and we go buy a new one. Books are becoming obsolete, because they follow a certain sequence. We do not like anything that will take time, and sequences and the methodical 'turning of a page' takes too much time. So we turn to images and nice pictures for our information. We are consumers. When we want something we get it, by going to the nearest shopping mall. The shops in the mall never seem to run out of the product that we so desire and yearn for.

I have dragged on the introduction just to test your patience. Patience is just my point. Above I have shown how we live in the culture of the immediate. The immediate is the opposite to patience. There is no place for patience in the times we live in. Everything is an 'Here' and 'Now' event. The present is everything. The future is only tomorrow's present, nothing else. Thus, patience as a virtue has been totally eliminated by our culture.

Information is gained immediately, and that is why its called information. If information could be gained any faster, it would be called 'data'. If it was gained through patience, with effort, and struggle, then it would be called knowledge. This is the knowledge of our Prophet (saw), the companions and our scholars. They had to struggle for knowledge. The highest level of such struggle for knowledge is when you practice that knowledge, this level is called wisdom. This is the hardest stage, for it is the level that requires the most patience, simply because it is the level with the most tests and difficulties. But the results of this level are tremendous and the most beautiful. It is this level that makes a man and a woman. It is this level that makes a true believer, and it is this stage where ideal possibilities are made real and actual. Thus did the Prophet Ibrahim (as) ask Allah; "Our Lord! send among them a Messenger of their own, who shall rehearse Thy signs to them and instruct them in Scripture and Wisdom, and sanctify them: For Thou are the Exalted in might and The Wise" (2:129). Imam Shafi'i says, that the scripture mentioned in this verse is referred to the Qur'an and the Wisdom is reference to the Prophet Mohammad's (saw) actions, sayings, struggles, methods, i.e., his Sunnah.

Further, computers can never gain knowledge and wisdom, but can only posses and/or process information and data. So there should be no real worry, just because the world chess champion, Kasparov, has lost against IBM's "Deeper Blue", a super-computer that is able to compute two hundred million chess moves a second. Or should we be worried? I am stubborn at times, and this is one of those times. I will answer by saying that there is still no need to be worried. For, the computer is not able to struggle and be caused any suffering and pain. What makes the human being great is that it is capable of taking on burdens that promise suffering and difficulties. Any rational agent, or creature, even a computer that one day is able to 'think', would avoid suffering at all costs. But the Muslim is special, he or she is much beyond such lowly notions of existence. The Muslim has a secret, he knows that with suffering and pain for the sake of Allah comes success and the True happiness, with a capital 'T'. Thus did the Prophet say that those who suffer the most are the Prophets, and next to them are those who are a degree lower than they, and so on. Although, it should be noted, that I do not mean we should run out and suffer for the sake of suffering. No! What I mean is that we should expect it when we work for the sake of Allah. These sorts of things are only to test us. And there are two keys that guarantee our success in these tests, they are our trust in Allah, and our patience. Whatever Allah does for us or puts in our way, is always for the best. This is beautifully expressed in the story of Moses in the Surah tul-Kahf (The Cave) of the Qur'an. In this story we find Moses being tried by Allah through a Wise man. The Wise man does things that seem immediately irrational. That is, if one were to look at the things the man did, like kill a young boy, put a hole in a boat that they were in, and so on, when taken in the immediate look foolish. That is why Moses kept asking for reasons for the Wise man's actions, but only found the reply, "did I not tell you that you cannot have any patience with me?" (18:72). But when these events are taken in an eternal and holistic fashion, one will see that Allah was justified in such cases, and that the only way to see this would be to be patient and have trust in Allah. So we should not be stuck in the immediate. Rather we should look beyond, where we will find that things that happen to us may seem bad at the moment, but they are ultimately always for the best. That is why the Prophet (saw) was always in total amazement of the believer, because when pricked by a thorn, he would always say "Praise be to Allah", and when put in a happy state of affairs, he still would cry "Praise be to Allah".

We have in the Islamic history, many examples of those who have suffered for the sake of Allah. We have the Prophet Mohammad (saw), we have the many Companions who were tortured, but never flinched. We have the many scholars and leaders, including Ahmed ibn Hanbal, Ibn Taymiyyah, 'Izudeen Abdul-Salam, Abdul Hamid al-Ghazali, Hassan Al-Banna, Abu 'Ala Maududi, Syed Qutb, Isma'il al-Faruqi, and Zainab al-Ghazali, to name just a few, may Allah have mercy upon them all. Who suffered for Truth either physically, psychologically, intellectually, spiritually, collectively and so on. This is nothing to shy away from, but it must be faced with patience and courage, for it is the only true mold for our service and servitude to Allah. It is what makes us believers and amongst the righteous. This finite pain will be our sacrifice to Allah, for a happiness and joy that is eternal and infinite.

In addition, upon further thought, we find that immediacy in gratification of low desires has no meaning and no purpose. The meaning is lost when the immediate is expressed for its own sake. When the 'Here' and 'Now' are the only things on people's minds, they do not care for meaning, because meaning can only be found over time, and the passage of time requires some patience. That is why now we find people trying to find meaning, but find none, and end up giving meaning to the meaningless. Also purpose is lost in actions and thoughts. Purpose is found only in consideration of the future. But when future is only an immediate present waiting to happen 'now', then there is no purpose, but only randomness and chaotic action and thought. This amounts to nothing but an illusion. And that is exactly what the immediate is, an illusion, as the Qur'an states it, "... for the life of this world is but goods and chattels of deception." And it continues in the next verse, "You shall be certainly be tried and tested, in your possessions and in your personal selves; and you shall hear much that will grieve you, from those who received the Book before you and from those who worship many gods. But if you persevere patiently and guard against evil, then that will be a determining factor in all affairs." (3:185-186).

Hence we must sacrifice the immediate gratification of our desires, and find our abode in patience. Once we take on the garb of patience, then we must become prepared for trial. Trial's, when passed, only increase your faith, your knowledge, your humanity, your love, your infinite desires, your closeness to Reality, and it is what brings us closer to perfection. Again the irony is in my writing, but the irony is tragic, and from the tragic one always builds and learns. Thus the beauty.

Patience is a virtue

2009-05-09T20:20:00.002+08:00

Patience is a virtue -- we've all heard that many times. Yet, I have always felt that though we "know" patience is important, it remains one of life's greatest lessons. In this "day and age" of instant gratification, it sometimes seems that patience is a forgotten commodity. It is somewhat like the joke that goes "God grant me patience, and give it to me right away."

Webster's dictionary defines [being] patient as:
1. enduring pain, trouble, etc. without complaint
2. calmly tolerating insult, delay, confusion, etc.
3. showing calm endurance
4. diligent; persevering.

No wonder we resist being patient... After all, if we equate it with enduring pain without complaint, calmly tolerating insult, then it certainly has no appeal. It sure makes it sound like taking on the martyr role... "suffering in silence"... But is we equate it with showing calm endurance, being diligent and persevering, then we see a different aspect of patience.

I feel that the word patience is synonymous with faith. To have patience is to have faith... in ourselves, in our fellow humans, in life in general. For example, when a child is learning to talk, even though we may not understand a sound they're saying, at first, we have patience (faith) that someday, soon, they will be able to speak clearly and be understood.

In the same way, when we are working on a project we have patience (faith) that it will work out and that we will be successful in attaining the goal we have set. Yet there are times when we give up, we lose faith, we lose patience, with ourselves and with others.

How hard it is to be patient... Sometimes we are impatient for something to end, and sometimes for something to begin. But always, impatience denotes a lack of acceptance of what is "the now". We are impatient for tomorrow to come, we are impatient for the weekend, we are impatient for a promotion, for a raise, for a new job, for our date to arrive, for our date to leave... It seems that there are always reasons to be impatient...

Yet, if we look at the reasons for our impatience, they always show dissatisfaction with the present. We want something other than that we have now. While that, in itself, is not necessarily bad -- after all, it is good to have a vision of a better life for ourselves -- but to do so at the "cost" of not living and loving the live we now have is a great loss. We ignore our "now" because we have a vision of how things could or "should" be...

Another instance where patience is often sorely lacking is when dealing with our fellow human beings (and with ourselves). We get impatient because someone is "slow", "stupid", "opinionated", "stubborn", "addicted", "arrogant", etc. We let our impatience turn into judgment and anger, and we create mini-wars within our families, our workplace, our neighborhood. We let our impatience with the way things are be a cause of division between ourselves and others.

We even let that happen within our own being. We are impatient with ourselves (me included) for not being "good enough"... for not yet having dropped whatever habit we are trying to break... for not being the person we know we can be... for acting from our "lower self" instead of our "higher self"... We are impatient with ourselves, get angry with ourselves, and become at war with ourselves.

Yet if we had patience (faith), we would see that all these things are transitory. Just as the baby learning to walk or talk has a learning process in which it makes mistakes -- and tries again and again -- we too make mistakes and must try and try again. But losing patience with ourselves, and with our fellow humans, does not help at all. It places us in the position of adversary rather than friend. It places us in the position of judge and jury, rather than a source of support. It creates a wall of division, rather than providing a light to make the way easier.

What is needed most in times of challenge, whether personal challenges, relationship challenges, or universal challenges, is to have faith in ourselves and faith in the human race. We must see ourselves as children learning to walk, and know that yes we will fall, we will make mistakes, but we must keep in our heart the faith that we will make it. We will succeed, eventually. We will learn to live from our "higher" self -- learn to live with love, acceptance of others, and faith in them and in ourselves.

We must have patience... with everyone and everything, including ourselves. Sometimes, that patience is most needed with those closest to us. We have seen them struggle through their life for so long, that it is often too easy for us to see what they "should" do... and because of that, we judge them and feel anger, or self-righteousness. Yet, we must remember that we all once were a small child learning to walk and talk, and that even though we now have the body of an adult, inside we are still that child, learning still. The skills we now are learning are not necessarily physical -- they are more emotional and spiritual. We are learning to be loving of ourselves and others, to have patience and faith in ourselves and others, to respect ourselves and others, etc.

These "life lessons" are much more challenging than learning to walk, because there are always so many temptations to take the other road... the easy road, the road of sloth or laziness, the road of judgment and criticism. It seems easier to be selfish than to be loving. It seems easier to be judgmental than be supportive. But the price we pay is great. The price is the loss of love, joy, and true inner peace. We can not be at peace with ourselves when we constantly put down our human brothers and sisters, when we ridicule them (whether silently or not), when we judge them for not "yet having it together".

At this time of family celebrations, it can be easy to fall into those patterns... after all, it's been years that "Jo" has been trying to quit [whatever] and is still addicted... it's been years that "Jane" has been an overbearing and rude person...

Yet, the life lesson resides not in "their" behavior. As we all know (unconsciously at least), we can not change anyone else. We can only change ourselves. And the magical thing is that the more we become accepting (of ourselves and others), the more loving we become, the less judgmental and critical, the more the people around us (including ourselves) are able to change.

We all have somewhat of a rebel inside... and when we feel a wall of resistance, we sometimes dig in our heels... Remember when you were a teenager and your mother wanted you to do something you didn't want to do... the more she pushed, the more you resisted.

Well, we all still have that teenager living inside, and the more we push (ourselves and others), the more resistance will come up. However, the more love and acceptance we have within our heart, the less resistance we will encounter.

Love is the answer -- it is the key to unlocking the future we have dreamed of. Yet, we cannot start by asking "the others" to love us unconditionally, if we don't first love ourselves and them unconditionally... without judgment, without criticism, without impatience. We must see the "higher self" in each person we encounter, we must know that even though the outward behavior is "less than loving", the higher self nevertheless is there inside waiting for a chance to "rise and shine"... And the more love we have, the more patience, the more acceptance of "what is" in the moment, the less resistance we will encounter.

It is not an easy road, but it does get easier. The hard part is overcoming the inertia of past behavior and attitudes... once we open our hearts to patience, faith, unconditional love and acceptance, the path does get easier... We learn to overlook "aggravations" and "errors"... When we feel aggravated at someone (and ourselves) we might as ourselves "What difference will this make in 10 days, 10 weeks, 10 years, 10 centuries?" That might help put things into perspective.

This holiday season let's be patient with ourselves, with those around us, and with the world in general. Let's have faith that love will prevail

Wenger: Chairmen must show more patience

2009-05-09T19:55:00.004+08:00

Arsene Wenger

Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger has called for Premier League chairmen to show more patience after the sackings of Luiz Felipe Scolari and Tony Adams this week.
Scolari was axed by Chelsea just seven months after taking charge at Stamford Bridge, while former Arsenal captain Adams lasted only 16 league games before being dumped by Portsmouth. Wenger, who is the Premier League's second longest serving manager behind Manchester United's Sir Alex Ferguson, is convinced his peers must be given time to settle into a job before being judged.

He was especially disappointed to see Adams lose his job. Adams won the league twice with Wenger but struggled to stamp his authority on the Portsmouth post after replacing Harry Redknapp. "I believe that Tony will be a very good manager and I don't believe he was given the needed time," Wenger told the Arsenal's website.

"It is a big surprise that so quickly they made a big decision because when they made the decision to give him the job they knew he has worked there for a year-and-a half and they knew him. When you give a young manager that much responsibility you have to give him time."
You know when one super manager is sacked at Chelsea, another super manager will come in. I rate Hiddink highly.
Arsene Wenger on the changes at Chelsea.

Wenger admitted he was shocked to hear Scolari had been sacked earlier, but he is impressed by the west London club's decision to appoint Guus Hiddink as the Brazilian's replacement until the end of the season. "Scolari is a well-known manager and was only given six months," he said.

"It is difficult to know what is the atmosphere inside the club when you don't live there every day, but it is still a massive surprise. However you know when one super manager is sacked at Chelsea, another super manager will come in. I rate Hiddink highly. He has been tremendously successful everywhere. He has had a long career and he's a strong personality."

Chelsea have dropped down to fourth in the table following a poor run of form in the final games of Scolari's reign, and are now only five points ahead of Arsenal in the race for the UEFA Champions League. Wenger, though, feels his men must concentrate on improving their own performances rather than worry about what might happen elsewhere.

"I believe we should focus on our way to be successful and not too much on the others," he said. "We need outstanding performances until the end of the season and the only way to achieve that is by focusing on our performances. If Chelsea gain points Aston Villa will drop, it is all linked together - but if we are consistent we will be there."

A Story of Patience a little boy and his Nintendo Wii

2009-05-09T19:34:00.000+08:00
source : http://www.internetnextstep.com
As you all know the biggest truth in MLM is PATIENCE. I just have to tell you this incredible story of PATIENCE as exhibited by my own son around christmas time.

Lets start from the beginning. A few months before Christmas I had seen stacks of Nintendo Wii's on the shelves of the local Electronics store called Future Shop. As there were so many there and they appeared to stay their for some time, I figured the hype of how popular the Nintendo Wii would be was false and figured I could pick one up for my son if he decided that was what he wanted for Christmas afterall.

Now I have to tell you there are times in a fathers life where we feel we made a Big BooBoo. This was such a time.

Not days later, Nintendo ran some ads on TV showing just how cool the Nintendo Wii was, and the foot race was on. My son officially went on record as wanting one for his christmas present, and every retailer I called OUT OF STOCK!

Now it wasn't all so simple as I work hard to not Spoil my children. I had agreed with the kids grandparents that they would contribute $150 to each of the kids presents and I would contribute the same. The Nintendo Wii itself was $279 plus taxes which for Vancouver, British Columbia Canada residents meant $315.27 before even buying games or extra controllers.

The arrangement with the kids was they could choose what they wanted for Christmas, but the budget was $300 total and the balance they would need to pay out of their own money should the items they want be in excess of this generous budget provided by Dad and Grandma and Grandpa.

My daughter picked a Video IPOD 80 gig and kicked in the balance to get it. She was Happy.

My son had his heart set on a Wii by Nintendo. He also wanted the Zelda game. I let both kids know that whatever they selected they selected and they could not change their minds even if they couldn't get it before Christmas, they both happily agreed.

Well, now the wheels fall off. January passes and my poor son still does not have a Nintendo Wii. I am starting to feel like a real bad Dad!

From time to time, my son attempts to press me on how he thinks a Wii will be in stock if we just go check all the stores again. Sadly I had phoned all the stores numerous times and new it not to be true. But my patient son didn't push to hard, just made it known he was still waiting.

February rolls by, still no Nintendo Wii!! Now I know I am a bad, mean and terrible person for continuing to enforce the agreement we had.

Same story for my patient son. Little nudges, LOTS of dissapointment, but no real pressure, just patience beyond what a 10 year old should know. I am both proud and disappointed for him all at the same time.

Calls to futureshop often started with them saying, "Hi, thank you for calling Future Shop we do not have any Wii's how else can I help you?!" OUCH!

March rolls mostly by still no Wii. I am getting distraught and almost gave up and provided choice number 2 a Sony Playstation 3 which by this time were in stock at Costco for $800!!

My son, like a trooper still patient.

I had to go to Walmart towards the end of March to pick up some brackets for hanging some blinds. I did it on my Kids day. Being divorced my day is Sunday, and I do not answer my phone when I am with them, I make the most of our time and do not let business interrupt, so if you ever call on a Sunday, know that I will not answer my phone as it is my dedicated time for my kids. Sorry!

So I get to Walmart and find my brackets, and my Patient son, doesn't even suggest we go look for a Wii by this time. I felt we were at the mall, at the very least I had to go through the motions for his sake and check all the places that may sell the Nintendo Wii.

First stop, Walmart where we already were. I walk into the Games section, and see a Nintendo Wii box sitting on the shelf. I prepare my patient son that often demo boxes are there and not to get too excited. I was a bit curious as there were a whole bunch of extra controllers there as well, either way, going through the motions I asked the guy working there, "You don't have any Nintendo Wii's do you?", and he replied, "yeah no, just that one in the case." I was dumbfounded. I said, "can I have it?" He said, "Sure." I just about fell over. I caught the look on my sons usually patient face. I think his cheeks were vibrating, either that or the lights were playing tricks. Actually, I think it was his whole body that was vibrating!

Well, now, in MLM we know we need patience as the harder you work and the more patient you are, the bigger the rewards you reap.

For my son, this turned out to be true as well. I walked out of Walmart with $570 worth of Nintendo Wii and Nintendo Wii controllers, oh and yeah $6 worth of brackets for blinds.

Well, now we were hungry, well my son not so much, he was still vibrating! We went to have a bite at the food court. I have never seen my son ignore New York Fries Poutine in my life, but this day, he was still showing his stoic patience by not showing how much it bugged him we wouldn't get him home to let him play with his new treasure.

We didn't make him wait too long, but unfortunately we were in Surrey, and I live in Vancouver, so we had a 40 minute drive to my place. Poor son, but patient. Excited, but still showing that patience. I was soooooooooo proud of him.

We finally make it home, jokingly i pretended we would overshoot the driveway and go around the block, but truth is I was pretty excited to play with this thing too so we headed in!

I had been bugging him for the whole trip how he owed me $270 and would have to be my slave for most of the rest of his life to pay it all off. He didn't care, whatever it took. I haven't told him yet, but I am thinking of letting him off the hook on that as his patience was stellar. I will make the deal that he has to let his sister play as well, if I do!

Well he got it all set up. What a Blast!!! We played 4 people tennis till 1:30am in the morning, then that game and Bowling, Golf, and Baseball and boxing all the next day!

We were all completely beat! Standing and swinging, and punching, was all more than any of us had bargained for. Sunday Morning, we could all barely move our arms!!

So a happy ending to a long story. Now let me tie it up a bit tighter with MLM.

You see not only did my son have to have HUGE patience to get to his goal, but a whole bunch of other things had to happen by accident.

I went to Walmart to get brackets for some blinds as i thought I had 2 left hand brackets, so needed a few more sets to get the right had brackets. Turns out they are the same, you just turn one upside down, so I actually didn't even need the brackets! If I would have known I didn't need the brackets, I wouldn't have been in Walmart that day!

I was 1 hour late picking up the kids that day due to Abnormally bad traffic, a typical 45 minute to an hour drive took almost 2 hours! Why did that matter?

Well, at Walmart as I was purchasing the Nintendo Wii, I asked the guy how many they got in and when. He said they got in 8 less than an hour ago! If I wasn't an hour late, I would have bought my brackets I didn't need, and checked for a Wii which wouldn't have even been on the shelf yet!! If I took 4 minutes more looking for brackets or walked slower getting to the games section, yep, you got it, there woudln't have been a Nintendo Wii left to be bought, and I would have felt even worse knowing how close we had missed them by.

Wow, amazing to me how the planets and stars all can align when the price of tea in China is just right and allow for these things to happen!

I now have a happy patient son, I feel great, and the only problem left is I now Want a Nintendo Wii for MEEEEEEEE!!!

So MLM. SAME THING. Work it long enough, be patient enough, do the things even when you do not feel like it, and eventually you will hit that day, when you find your Nintendo Wii. It is true. MLM is life and life is MLM!

Thank you for letting me share.

Would love feedback at dennis@internetnextstep.com if you have any. The Nintendo Wii could just be the answer to Childhood Obesity! I know I must have shed at least a pound or 2 in a day and a half of playing it!

Religious perspectives about Patience

2009-05-09T17:44:00.003+08:00
Patience is often described as a core virtue in religion or spiritual practices. For example, Job is a figure that appears in the Hebrew Bible, Christian Bible and the Qur'an; his story is considered a profound religious work. At its core, the theme is the co-existence of evil and God and the application of patience is highlighted as the antidote to the earthly struggles caused by that co-existence. The plot of the book is that Job endures near-apocalyptic calamities without losing his patience or reproaching Divine Providence. In the Qur'an, the person of Job is actually known as Ayyūb (Arabic: أيوب ), which is a name that is symbolic of the virtue of patience (although it does not mean patience in itself).

Judaism
Patience and fortitude are prominent themes in Judaism. The Talmud extols patience as an important personal trait. The story of Micah, for example, is that he suffers many challenging conditions and yet endures, saying "I will wait for the God who saves me." Patience in God, it is said, will aid believers in finding the strength to be delivered from the evils that are inherent in the physical life.
In the Hebrew Bible, patience is referred to in several proverbs, such as "The patient man shows much good sense, but the quick-tempered man displays folly at its height" (Proverbs 14:29, NAB); "An ill-tempered man stirs up strife, but a patient man allays discord." (Proverbs 15:18, NAB); and "A patient man is better than a warrior, and he who rules his temper, than he who takes a city." (Proverbs 16:32). The emotion is also discussed in other sections, such as Ecclesiastes: "Better is the patient spirit than the lofty spirit. Do not in spirit become quickly discontented, for discontent lodges in the bosom of a fool." (Ecclesiastes 7:8-9, NAB).

Christianity
In the Christian religion, patience is one of the most valuable virtues of life. Increasing patience is viewed as the work of the Holy Ghost in the Christian who has accepted the gift of salvation. While patience is not one of the traditional biblical three theological virtues nor one of the traditional four cardinal virtues, it is one of the seven virtues, alongside chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, kindness, and humility.
In the Christian Bible, patience is referred to in several sections. The Book of Proverbs note that "through patience a ruler can be persuaded, and a gentle tongue can break a bone" (Proverbs 25:14-16, NIV); Ecclesiastes points out that the "end of a matter is better than its beginning, and patience is better than pride" (Ecclesiastes 7:7-9, NIV); and Thessalonians states that we should "be patient with all. See that no one returns evil for evil; rather, always seek what is good for each other and for all" (1 Thessalonians 5:14-15, NAB). In the Epistle of James, the Bible urges Christians to be patient, and " see how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth,...until it receives the early and the late rains." (James 5:7-11, NAB). In Galatians, patience is listed as one of the "fruit of the Spirit": "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law". (Galatians 5:21-23, NIV). In Timothy, the Bible states that "Jesus might display his unlimited patience as an example for those who would believe on him and receive eternal life".(1 Timothy 1:15-17, NIV).

Islam
Main article: Sabr
Patience in Islam is one of the best and most valuable virtues of life. Through patience, a Muslim believes that an individual can grow closer to Allah and thus attain true peace. It is also stressed in Islam, that Allah is with those who are patient, more specifically during suffering. Some of the Quran verses about patience urge Muslims to "seek God (Allah)'s help with patient perseverance and prayer" (2:45) and "give glad tidings to those who patiently persevere" (2:155-157). The Quran states that Muslims should "Persevere in patience and constancy" (3:200) and "be steadfast in patience" (11:115). It notes that "No one will be granted such goodness except those who exercise patience and self-restraint, none but persons of the greatest good fortune." (41:35).
As well, the Quran states that "It is not righteousness that you turn your faces towards East or West. But it is righteousness to believe in Allah and the Last Day, And the Angels, and the Book, and the Messengers; To spend of your substance, out of love for Him, For your kin, for orphans, for the needy, for the wayfarer, for those who ask, and for the ransom of slaves; To be steadfast in prayer And give in charity; To fulfill the contracts which you have made; And to be firm and patient, in pain and adversity And throughout all periods of panic. Such are the people of truth, the God-fearing." Qur'an 2:177
The Muslim faith believes that without a good spirit while enduring, the struggle will not bear its full reward, thus, Patiently persevering, striving and going forward, despite the difficulty, is the pinnacle of behavior during challenging times. Through every difficulty, Allah promises, there will be found relief upon its conclusion. Instead of wanting to skip challenging times, and avoid them, Allah is teaching that the way to the easing, is through, the difficulty. It takes Patient Perseverance, or enduring with a good spirit still intact, in order to reap both the internal and external rewards of struggle.

Eastern religions
Main article: Kshanti
In Buddhism, patience (Skt.: kshanti; Pali: khanti) is one of the "perfections" (paramitas) that a bodhisattva trains in and practices to realize perfect enlightenment (bodhi). Patience is recognized within Hinduism in the Bhagavad Gita. In both Hinduism and Buddhism there is a particular emphasis on meditation, aspects of which lead to a natural state of mindfulness that is conducive to patient, effective and well-organised thought.

Scientific perspectives

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In evolutionary psychology and in cognitive neuroscience, the patience is studied as a decision-making problem, involving the choice of either a small reward in a short span of time, or a more valuable reward after a long period of time. All animals, humans included, discount future rewards—the present value of delayed rewards is viewed as less than the value of immediate rewards.

In a 2005 study involving common marmosets and cottontop tamarins, both species faced a self-control paradigm in which individuals chose between taking an immediate small reward and waiting a variable amount of time for a large reward. Under these conditions, marmosets waited significantly longer for food than tamarins. This difference cannot be explained by life history, social behaviour or brain size. It can, however, be explained by feeding ecology: marmosets rely on gum, a food product acquired by waiting for exudate to flow from trees, whereas tamarins feed on insects, a food product requiring impulsive action. Foraging ecology, therefore, may provide a selective pressure for the evolution of self-control

Patience (source: Wikipedia)

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Patience (pā-shəns) is the state of endurance under difficult circumstances, which can mean persevering in the face of delay or provocation without becoming annoyed or upset; or exhibiting forbearance when under strain, especially when faced with longer-term difficulties. It is also used to refer to the character trait of being steadfast. Antonyms include hasty and impetuous.

Emotional Spiritual Quotient (ESQ) Important to Building Moslem Business

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Spirituality was conceived of as the central object on which ESQ training operated. However, it did not really exist for most Indonesian participants before they encountered the training program. This object was rendered in English and was therefore likely a term with which participants only had passing familiarity, if that. Therefore, Ary Ginanjar had to create spirituality and ensure that it was understood as located within an individual's body, before it could be activated and acted on. Spirituality was invoked as something that had been lost in Indonesia's rush to development and modernization under the authoritarian government of Suharto. Ary Ginanjar lamented that for "too long Indonesian companies have emphasized science and technical knowledge," but neglected spirituality. This meant that Intellectual Quotient (IQ) was prioritized as the index of one's work capabilities. In contrast, Ary Ginanjar saw his mission as enhancing the spiritual knowledge (which he terms SQ, an abbreviation for Spiritual Quotient) of Indonesians through spiritual training.

This emphasis on spirituality, however, was not a rejection of science in favor of mysticism. Rather, Ary Ginanjar saw his efforts to develop spirituality as commensurable with the latest developments in psychology, psychiatry, and neuroscience. When I asked Ary Ginanjar why he invoked the English word "spiritual" as opposed to an Indonesian or Arabic term like rohani as the central object of the training program he responded that it lent "universal" authority to his project of spiritual reform. He said, "if I use Indonesian [in the training] they will think that it is about religion. But if I talk in English, they will think that it is universal. That it is science, not religion." Thus, he considered cultivating spirituality as commensurable with scientific rationality, rather than a mystical endeavor.

During the ESQ training, spirituality was represented as a universal human attribute that was physically isolated in the individual bodies of every human being. For evidence of this Ary Ginanjar drew on the scientific research of the University of California, San Diego neuroscientist V. S. Ramachandran who "found the existence of the God Spot in the human brain" In his books and training programs, Ary Ginanjar argued that the center of spirituality in most humans, the God Spot, is "shackled" by preconceptions and prejudices, which leads people to behave immorally, ignore work duties, and engage in corruption. Spirituality was further conceived of as universal in so far as specific religious traditions were merely surface manifestations of the same underlying global spirituality. The goal of the training is to eliminate obstacles to "unshackle" the natural propensity for spirituality to guide action.

The mobilization of spirituality was designed to have profound effects. ESQ training involved the introduction of a new way of conceiving of one's relationship to oneself. A lecture in the afternoon of the second day of the training asserted that a universal spirituality was connected to what was purported to be an innate human propensity for making correct moral judgments. In this lecture Rinaldi depicted two possible ways in which one could respond to the "problems and challenges" that one faced. Two hypothetical courses of action were laid out in a neat flow chart. In the first, a materialistic orientation resulted in "uncontrolled emotions" like anger, dejection, and sadness. This resulted in the closure of one's "spiritual conscience"[suara hati spiritual tertutup] and a "shackling of the God Spot" This condition led to a failure in one's ability to act logically [logika tidak bekerja normal] and an imbalance in one's IQ, EQ, and SQ resulting in a "split personality." The second possible response to individual and collective crises was what was termed "a spiritual orientation toward the unity of God" In this model of subjectivity one's emotions were managed, so that one was calm and peaceful leading to an open God Spot

Immediately following this description of possible spiritual orientations Rinaldi lectured about the relationship between "opening the God Spot" and being a diligent worker. As an example, he turned to a local cultural example, invoking the Sultan of Yogyakarta's "interior servants". Rinaldi said the contemporary crisis in Indonesia was a result of the fact that people "don't know why they work" and that they needed to be reminded that "they work for God."

Later that day in a private conversation, Rinaldi said the goal of ESQ was to "unshackle the God Spot." I asked him what this meant and he continued, "Every human being is already honest, just, and accountable. But they don't always act this way. Why? Because their God Spot is blocked! It is blocked because of all the negative influences in the world. What they need is to return to spiritual values. ESQ opens up the God Spot and allows the goodness that is already inside people to come out." He continued, by explaining that knowledge of right and wrong is already intrinsic to human beings, "conscience exists in humans. No one has to teach them to not do corruption, because people already know that it is wrong. … These things are not taught by men, but given by God." Participants are thus instructed that through "unshackling" their spiritual center, the "God Spot," they can renounce degenerate pasts and become better workers, kin, and citizens.
Cultivating spirituality within subjects of spiritual reform was intended to make participants more amenable to managerial norms, but it was also intended to make participants more effective at self-management by transforming their work into a matter of religious piety. Living a virtuous religious life was likened to being a virtuous laborer and vice versa. A spiritual economy involves the creation of spirituality as an object, represented in this case as the God Spot, which is understood to be located within the self, Spirituality is then activated and acted on to elicit specific dispositions in those who participate in spiritual reform. These dispositions include the next two significant components of spiritual economies: treating work as a form of worship and cultivating an ethics of individual accountability

Spiritual IQ

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IQ and EQ give way to spiritual intelligence,
the ultimate intelligence that can add
value and meaning to your life

For long, the world gave much importance to Intelligence Quotient. "My son has an IQ of 210!" the proud mother would gush. "He's going to be a scientist." This attitude is a legacy of the early 20th century when psychologists devised tests to measure intelligence. These tests primarily measured intellectual or rational intelligence (used to solve logical problems). The higher the figure, the belief went, the greater the intelligence.

In mid-1990s, Daniel Goleman revealed findings in neuroscience and psychology that stressed the importance of Emotional Quotient (EQ). This makes us aware of our feelings and that of others. It gives empathy, motivation, compassion and an ability to respond skillfully to pleasure and pain. Goleman argued that EQ was a basic requirement for the use of IQ. If the areas of our brain that feel are damaged, our ability to think effectively is diminished.

Last year, however, authors Dana Zohar and Ian Marshall introduced a new dimension to human intelligence. Spiritual Quotient (or SQ) is the ultimate intelligence, they claim. This is the intelligence used to solve problems of meaning and value. "Is my job giving me the fulfillment I seek?" "Am I relating to the people in my life in a way that contributes to their happiness and mine?" Answers to these questions determine whether we will find happiness or not. IQ and EQ are inadequate in such issues.

"Spiritual intelligence," explains Ram Mohan, a Vedanta teacher, "is about the growth of a human being. It is about moving on in life. About having a direction in life and being able to heal ourselves of all the resentment we carry. It is thinking of ourselves as an expression of a higher reality. It is also about how we look at the resources available to us. We realize that nature is not meant to be exploited. Ultimately, we discover freedom from our sense of limitation as human beings and attain moksha.
"
Anand Tendolkar, a workshop leader, says: "For me spiritual intelligence is about pondering over my life's purpose. Just being in touch with that question is fulfilling. Finally I realize that there is an immensity to me. As I move along the path, deeper levels of myself get unfolded, leading to fulfillment.
"
Humans are essentially spiritual beings, evolved to ask fundamental questions. "Who am I?" "Where am I going?" "What do others mean to me?" It is an ability to answer questions like these that lead people to personal growth workshops. Spiritual intelligence motivates people to balance their work schedules to spend time with the family. Or an executive with a high SQ might look beyond profit margins and devote time for voluntary work with orphans. Spiritual intelligence also addresses the need to place one's life in a shared context of value.

The transformative power of SQ distinguishes it from IQ and EQ. IQ primarily solves logical problems. EQ allows us to judge the situation we are in and behave appropriately. SQ allows us to ask if we want to be in that situation in the first place. It might motivate us to create a new one. SQ has little connection to formal religion. Atheists and humanists may have high SQ while someone actively religious may not.

"The awakening of our spiritual intelligence may be a time of great joy and meaning," says Anita Pandey, who frequents personal growth programs. "Suddenly I had a feeling of being in control. Earlier things happened to me. Now I am more aware. Also, I have actually started living those values I had heard about—like acceptance and unconditional love.
"
In their book Spiritual Intelligence—The Ultimate Intelligence, Zohar and Marshall discuss the scientific evidence for SQ. In the 1990s, research by neuropsychologist Michael Persinger and neurologist V.S. Ramachandran at the University of California led to an identification of a 'God-spot' in the human brain. This area is located among neural connections in the temporal lobes of the brain. During scans with positron emission topography, these neural areas light up whenever research subjects are exposed to discussion of spiritual topics. Of course, this is culture specific, with Westerners responding to ideas of 'God' and Buddhists and Hindus responding to certain symbols. While the God-spot does not prove the existence of 'God', it does indicate that the brain is programmed to ask ultimate questions.

We use spiritual intelligence to transform ourselves and others, heal relationship, cope with grief, and move beyond conditioned habits of the past. To develop high SQ, each person needs to approach the task according to his/her personality.

J.L. Holland divided people into six personality types (take the test) and devised tests to determine one's type, or the mix.

On each personality test we would have scored between zero and 12. This indicates the strength of our interest in that sector of life. An average adult will score 6 or more on perhaps three of the personality types. For example, we might score highest (say nine) on the artistic type, but score seven on the enterprising type and six on the investigative. Naturally, we must allow for some degree of overlap between the different types.

Once we know our personality type, we can better choose our particular path to higher SQ.

CONVENTIONAL TYPE: THE PATH OF DUTY
We follow this path by serving the community. This is done by realizing our life's purpose and following it with full commitment. We have the interest of humanity in mind and pursue what we truly love for others' sake. Many of us may want to associate ourselves with a specific organization to fulfill this ambition.

Whatever outlet we choose, we must avoid two common mistakes that people on this path make. Avoid becoming narcissistic. It is an easy trap to slip into. At one point we may withdraw completely from relationships and focus only on ourselves. Behaviors associated with such self-absorption include lying in bed late, heavy drinking and smoking and overindulgence in food and sex. A narcissist must address his problems adequately through therapy or spiritual practices before he can progress on the path of duty.

Avoid extreme identification with your group and its uncritical championing. We must realize that there is a place in the world for groups whose values differ from ours.

SOCIAL TYPE: THE PATH OF NURTURING
This path is about loving, nurturing and protecting. It corresponds to the Mother Goddess. People on this path include parents, teachers, nurses and therapists, who reach out to others with acceptance and compassion and provide them with the space to grow and find themselves.

To pursue this path, the right attitude is crucial. "How can I serve others when I myself need so much from others?" explains Ram Mohan. "For example, I live in a city where many of the things I consume—like food and medicines—are not produced. I need the efforts of so many people to make life possible. I realize that I am only making my talents available to people in return for things I am receiving. When I look at it this way, it helps me face the many disappointments I may encounter.
"
It is important to be mindful of the way we help others. A distorted way is to succumb to the shadow aspect of love and nurturing, which is hatred and revenge. Love can be patient and kind but when we do not truly love ourselves, our love for others becomes bitter and destructive.

Another common failing is to suffocate the person we seek to love. We have to give the person space to grow. To pursue this path effectively, we must be receptive and listen to the other person. We must be willing to reveal ourselves to others. A risk-free approach is unlikely to succeed.

When we meet great teachers, one striking thing about them is their ability to truly be there for another person. Such attention and empathy is rare. To pursue this path, we must model ourselves on a teacher or mentor who has already clarified his life before reaching out to others.

INVESTIGATIVE TYPE: THE PATH OF KNOWLEDGE
The path of knowledge covers a broad range of experience. It could be something as simple as solving everyday problems. Or, as vast as pursuing a spiritual path. Most people on this path are scholars, scientists or those who have an intense love of learning.

How we pursue this path can have profound benefits for mankind. One can engage in research that solves problems plaguing mankind. For instance, a scientist could devise a cheap fuel that is eco-friendly.

While the potential of this path is limitless, we must clarify our intention in pursuing it.

We must realize that all things are interconnected and we cannot apply our knowledge to one area of experience without having profound effects on others.

Nandan Savnal, Mumbai-based NLP trainer, alerts us to another crucial aspect: "One of the most important challenges on this path," he says, "is whether you are going to be honest with yourself and question things. When you investigate matters, your value system will be challenged. You will have to press on regardless. You cannot afford to operate from your comfort zone.
"
Another spiritually unintelligent way to walk this path that must be avoided is using our talent to support morally reprehensible work. Like the historians who deny the Holocaust or those who devote themselves to spreading racist propaganda.

ARTISTIC TYPE: THE PATH OF PERSONAL TRANSFORMATION
Writers, artists, musicians and their like constitute only 10 to 15 percent of the population. But most of us walk this path to some extent. The task facing such people is personal and transpersonal integration. We must explore the depths of ourselves and weld the disparate fragments into a harmonious whole.

The path most closely associated with the brain's God-spot activity, people here are most open to extreme emotions and eccentric behavior. For this reason, artists are most often thought of as society's healers (or shamans). They journey into the unknown and return with a fragment that can heal us all. This is the process that has created some of the world's greatest art.

Cultures throughout history have treated the artist as someone blessed with special vision. Indeed, their capacity to create societal awareness is profound. Consider the great saint-poets like Rumi and Kabir.

For Savnal, engaging with great stories from different traditions has been therapeutic. "When I was young," he says, "I was fascinated by the story about Bhima in which he has a wrestling match and jumps up with the strength of ten elephants every time he is knocked down. With time, I realized that the suggestion is to bounce back with greater energy every time you face a setback.
"
We must watch out for certain traps, however. One is becoming an aesthete—people concerned with form only who produce art purely for sensual gratification. Their goal is acquisition and display. Another common failing is to be a compulsive, permanent rebel. Such people will resist order and imagination in their art, fight committed relationships and even miss deadlines.

The extremes described above are a turning away from conflict. But when an artist embraces his conflict he can claim his spiritual intelligence and produce art of lasting value.

REALISTIC PERSON: THE PATH OF BROTHERHOOD
Priti Sen is a caring middle-aged mother and a devoted wife. Her husband is a rich, influential businessman. She loves socializing and also does charity work. Seemingly strong, cheerful and in charge of her life, the truth about her is not immediately obvious. Her teenage son lost both his legs in an accident. While her shattered husband and other children cry almost daily, Priti is quiet, sensible and calm. She busies herself caring for her son, building a new life for him. Her ability to accept adversity is a source of strength to her family.

Priti exemplifies the attributes of the realistic type. Practical, no-nonsense, uncomfortable with overt feelings, these people personify the virtues of the hero. Their mission in life is to pursue the path of brotherhood and justice. It is to see a connection between themselves and all other beings. A Buddhist sutra describes this: "In the heaven of Indra (the king of the gods in the Hindu pantheon) there is a network of pearls so arranged that if you look at one, you see all the others reflected in it. In the same way, each object in the world is not merely itself, but involves every other object and in fact is every other object.
"
Those who have internalized this precept form organizations that bring justice into the world. They decide how rights and goods are distributed for the benefit of all. This involves respect for the other's point of view. When such people work together in NGOs or spiritual organizations, they grow toward a deeper understanding that all people are players in a larger pattern.

ENTERPRISING TYPE: THE PATH OF SERVANT-LEADERSHIP
All human groupings, families, tribes and societies need leaders to impart vision, motivation and purpose. Effective leaders must be confident, outgoing and comfortable with power. Truly great leaders are servant-leaders-those who serve humanity by creating new ways for people to relate to each other. They put the good of society above their own good and take society in new directions. Buddha and Jesus were such leaders. In India, we had Emperor Ashoka who, after his brutal conquest of Kalinga, converted to Buddhism and embraced nonviolence. And environmentalists like Sunderlal Bahuguna and Medha Patkar have forced people to look afresh at ecological issues.

It must be stressed, however, that a servant-leader should have a great deal of inner clarity. A spiritually unintelligent way to walk this path is to use one's power to exploit others. Another mistake is to focus purely on one's petty needs and ignore the interests of the people we serve.

"The challenge is to have a vision," says Ram Mohan. "After that, the task is to build trust and empower people to give their best." It is essential to do this ethically. In a corrupt society, there will be pressures on us and we must know how to handle it. To retain his balance, a leader would do well to think about trusteeship. Gandhi declared that when an individual has more than his proportionate share of wealth, he should become a trustee of that portion on God's behalf.

It is to this noble vision of leadership that one must aspire. In an increasingly fragmented world, we need leaders of vision who can bring hope and purpose into the lives of others, someone who sees all of humanity as God's people. As Jesus said: "Not my will, Lord, but thine.
"
The outline of the above paths is meant to help those who wish to develop their spiritual intelligence and gain a better awareness of themselves. To this awareness must be added the invaluable ingredient of hard work. But thinking of ourselves as spiritual beings is a useful start. Once we do this, we can enlarge our idea of intelligence to include this greater vision of ourselves.

When we commit ourselves to the chosen paths in this light, we begin to imbue greater meaning, value and fulfillment in our lives.

EIGHT SIGNS OF HIGH SQ
1.Flexibility
2.Self-awareness
3.An ability to face and use suffering
4.The ability to be inspired by a vision
5.An ability to see connections between diverse things (thinking holistically)
6.A desire and capacity to cause as little harm as possible
7.A tendency to probe and ask fundamental questions
8.An ability to work against convention

SEVEN TYPES OF INTELLIGENCE
With the popularity of EQ and SQ in recent years, it might be worth remembering an older way of conceiving intelligence, which helps cultivate individual aspects of ourselves. This is Howard Gardner's theory of Multiple Intelligence. In 1984, in his book 'Frames of Mind—The Theory of Multiple Intelligences', he offered a critique of IQ testing and suggested that what we possess is not one 'intelligence' but seven different intelligences. These are: logical-mathematical, linguistic, musical, bodily kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal and spatial.

Intelligence Type and How To Develop It:

Logical-Mathematical Intelligence
This is what we use to manipulate concepts and arrange them into meaningful patterns. We develop this by constantly confronting objects, assessing them and reordering them.

1.Learn a computer language
2.Work on logic puzzles
3.Identify scientific principles around the house: pumps, bulbs etc.

Linguistic Intelligence
This is the intelligence that gives us sensitivity to language, an ability to absorb and manipulate it skillfully and to be aware of shades of meaning.

1.Take a writing class
2.Record yourself speaking into a tape-recorder
3.Memorize passages of poetry

Musical Intelligence
This gives us our sensitivity to sound, our ability to arrange sounds into patterns pleasing to the human ear.

1.Sing in the shower
2.Memorize tunes
3.Spend time listening to music everyday

Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence
This is the intelligence that gives us the ability to perform tasks of great discipline and commitment with our bodies. Dancers, athletes and martial arts practitioners have this.

1.Take up martial arts like tai chi or karate
2.Take up a sport
3.Learn a craft such as woodworking or crochet

Interpersonal Intelligence
This gives us the ability to relate skillfully with others, to be aware of our feelings and the other person's, to see where the other person is coming from.

1. Decide to meet one new person a week and stay in touch.
2. Join an NGO
3. Spend 15 minutes a day listening actively to a friend.

Intrapersonal Intelligence
This is about becoming truly aware of ourselves and having the ability to constantly purify ourselves in order to access higher levels of joy and power.

1.Do a vipassana course and make it a part of your life
2.Spend time with yourself everyday, just being quiet
3.Read biographies of people with powerful personalities

Spatial Intelligence
This form of intelligence calls upon our ability to create a mental image. It gives us the capacity to perceive the visual world accurately and to perform transformations and modifications upon our initial perceptions. Artists, designers and architects have this intelligence.

1.Take classes in painting, sculpture or photography
2.Buy a graphics software program and create designs on the computer
3.Watch films with attention to lighting, camera angles, color and other aspects of cinema.

Spiritual Quotient

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SQ (based on the brain's third neural system, the synchrounous neural oscillations that unify data across the whole brain) offer us a viable tertiary process for the first time. This process unifies, integrates and has potential to transform material arising from the IQ and EQ. It facilitates a dialogue between reason and emotion, between mind and body. It provides a fulcrum for growth and tranformation for a sustainability tommorow. It provides the self with an active, unifying, meaning-giving centre.

SQ is an internal and inner wisdom, innate ability of the human brain and psyche, drawing its deepest resources from the heart of the universe itself. SQ is the soul's intelligence. It is the intelligence with which we heal ourselves and with which we make ourselves whole. SQ is the intelligence that rest in the deep part of the self that is connected to wisdom from beyond the IQ, or concious mind, it is the intelligence with which we are not only recognize existing values, but with which we creatively discover new values. SQ has 'wired' us to become people we are and gives us potential for further 'rewiring' - for growth and transformation, for further evolution of our human potential. SQ is our compass 'at the edge'. 'The edge' is the border between order and chaos, between knowing comfortably what we are about and being totally lost. It is the place where we can be at our most creative. SQ, our deep, intuitive sense of meaning and value, is our guide 'at the edge'. SQ is our conscience, it take us to understanding of who we are and what things mean to us, and how these give others and their meaning a place in our own world.

Realizing the important of SQ, future medical doctors should take some of their time to learn how to nurture and develop their SQ properly. With appropriate level of SQ they will be better and good doctors. If we fail to develop our SQ, actually we plan to ruin ourselves. Think about it and let us transforming ourselves into a sustainable tommorow.

Reference

1. Danah Zohar & Ian Marshall (2000). SQ: Connecting With Our Spiritual Intelligence, Bloombury, New York.

The Spiritual Quest

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Spirituality exists in the hearts and minds of everyone. Based on Tillich's definition of spirituality as the domain of ultimate concern, everyone can be regarded as being spiritual due to having ultimate concerns. Yet, there might be varying degrees of its depth and expression such as being unconscious or conscious; developed or undeveloped, healthy or pathological; naive or sophisticated. While spirituality involves a high level of cognitive, moral, emotional and interpersonal development line; it can also be seen as an attitude at any stage. Some people also define it in terms of relationships to a Higher Being.
Being concerned with the inner life of mind and spirit, spiritual intelligence implies a capacity for deep understanding of existential questions and insights into different levels of consciousness. As spiritual intelligence emerges as consciousness evolves into an ever-deepening awareness of matter, life, body, mind, spirit and soul it is more than an individual ability. By connecting the personal to the transpersonal and the self to spirit it goes beyond conventional psychological development.

Wilber, one of the prominent scholars in this field, asserted that rather than being an altered state of consciousness spirit is already present in waking, dreaming and sleeping states. In other words, there is only spirit which different states arise. In contrast to wishful thinking, spiritual intelligence enables us to see things free from unconscious distortions. Despite being related to all of the cognitive, emotional and moral development spiritual intelligence does not equally solely to any of them. Spiritual maturity subsumes a degree of emotional, cognitive and moral maturity. Spiritual maturity aims at leading towards enlightenment, awakening, inner peace or self-realization. Regardless of the goal, the process entails a transformation of consciousness. While practice can deepen the capacity for love and compassion as well as wisdom spiritual intelligence enables one to recognize the value of these qualities in others as well as within oneself. Related to the spiritual development are the different stages of wisdom as identified by Fowler (1995):

- In childhood, faith is based on imagination and fantasy.
- In the mythic literal stage, stories are interpreted literally.
- At the conventional stage, beliefs tend to be conventional and unexamined.
- The individual reflective stage is characterized by demythologizing and individual responsibility for beliefs and values.
- The conjunctive stage that emerges in midlife involves a recognition of the unconscious and a more paradoxical understanding of truth.
- Universalizing faith is inclusive of all being and free from ideological shackles.

As spiritual maturity implies the negotiation of all these stages of faith development may not necessarily occur in a neat and linear fashion.
As Sufi teachings point out, it is the inspired self that first tastes the joys of spiritual experience and begins to take genuine pleasure in prayer, meditation and other spiritual activities. Spiritual practices can generally be defined as intentional activities concerned with relating to the sacred. The cultivation of spiritual intelligence calls fro a commitment to some fork of spiritual practice. Walsh (1999) described various practices common to religions which foster the opening of the heart and mind. These include motivation for spiritual growth, the universal desire for happiness, emotional transformation, cultivating love and gratitude, ethical living for peace of mind, attentional training for concentration, the awakening of spiritual vision and wisdom and service.

In relation to other areas of inquiry, spiritual intelligence can be thought of in the following ways (Voughan, 2003):

- Scientific inquiry: The application of spiritual intelligence to all areas of inquiry would require a reexamination of the existing beliefs and assumptions about reality and the inclusion of both subjective and objective perspectives. Knowledge in itself is necessary but not sufficient for wisdom.

- Spiritual choices: There are many choices for those seeking spiritual guidance given the huge number of books at any bookstore. Spiritual intelligence enables a person to recognize what really matters.
- Relationships: Apart from deepening relationships with the loved ones, spiritual intelligence contributes to healing relationships and makes one realize the power of forgiveness and the capacity to both give and receive love.
- Parenting: By being exposed to early experiences of spirituality the inner world of imagination can be explored.
- Solitude: Periods of solitude can help one to come to terms with the existential realities of aloneness, freedom and death.
- Varieties of spiritual intelligence: Interpretations of various spiritual experiences are shaped by beliefs; their integration depends on both cognitive and emotional factors. Acknowledging this variety of spiritual experiences is crucial for the development of spiritual intelligence.
- Self-concept: Investigation of personal beliefs about who and what we think we are is an important part of spiritual inquiry. Disdentifying from the ego, recognizing that ego-centered demands will never satisfy the soul are crucial aspects of the spiritual path.

By choosing the spiritual path, we may identify ourselves with being a soul on a quest for meaning rather than an ego in pursuit of personal power. This quest may focus on a search for truth or enlightenment or on the realization of one's true nature. By integrating spiritual knowledge with wisdom, compassion and action we may awaken to a sense of gratitude and meaningful purpose.

Tendonitis: A Spiritual Journey

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For a long time, Judith Zwerdling Zwelling, now Director of Applied Music, Manager of the Ewell Concert Series and instructor of piano here at the College, couldn’t play piano without having excruciating pain in her arms.

After getting her Master of Music at the New England Conservatory of Music, Zwelling looked forward to a bright future in music, seeing where freelance performances and administrative work could take her. In 1983 she took a position on the piano faculty at William and Mary. A few years later, she found out she had tendonitis and everything seemed to come to a grinding halt.

“I had this incident of pulling up the parking brake—it was stuck—and I felt an incredible pain,” she said, rubbing her inner arm. After that it was nearly impossible to play without sharp shooting pains extending up her forearm.

The pain was from an acute case of tendonitis, a condition where tendons such as those in the wrist and elbow become inflamed from injury or extreme overuse, making a normally smooth motion highly painful. The condition is exacerbated for pianists by practicing long hours with tension in the arms. But Zwelling’s injury was unexpected. “I hadn’t realized that my playing position had become much more stiff because I wasn’t having any pain,” she said.

A handout from the Student Health Center at William and Mary says succinctly that tendonitis is “usually curable. Allow six weeks for complete healing.” To those affected by it, it is hardly so simple. For Zwelling, it was nothing short of a journey.

***

After visiting a family doctor, wearing an unsuccessful arm brace and taking a series of anti-inflammatory drugs with bad side effects, she met an osteopath who was into alternative medicine.

“I went to him by chance, it was really a providential meeting,” Zwelling said. Osteopathy, like chiropractic, emphasizes manual manipulation to treat illness. But her family didn’t think it was real medicine, so they advised her to keep searching.

One doctor suggested she might have thoracic outlet syndrome, which meant she had compressed nerves and/or blood vessels in her chest from her injury that in turn were aggravating all of the tension lower down. Another sent her to an Olympic trainer who gave her strenuous exercises. Nothing helped.

“It was worse doing these exercises,” Zwelling said.

Which is when she returned to the osteopath, who promptly told her that of course you can’t exercise an injured part, and began a series of appointments where he did various arm manipulations and eventually referred her to a friend. His friend was a third generation Chinese master acupuncturist. Who lived in Florida.

“I went by myself, left the three kids and the husband, and I spent 10 or 12 days with an appointment every morning. He would say every day after my appointment, ‘Go and have a fruitful day.’ It turned into a spiritual journey.”

Zwelling went to Florida able to play only five minutes a day before having to stop from intense pain. By the end of her visit, she had gained considerable playing time.

“But of course I couldn’t stay in Florida,” she said. She tried to maintain some of the things she learned when she returned to Williamsburg, to little avail. “Within a month it had faded.”

She started seeing her osteopath regularly, along with an acupuncturist in Charlottesville, VA, adding a four to six hour round trip commute into her schedule.

She tried the Alexander Technique, a way of moving and holding the muscles in the body differently to try and relax them. “It was hard to learn because you have to identify these little groups of muscles, like in the back of your neck,” Zwelling said.

She tried Feldenkrais, a method where “you do exercise unbelievably slowly so you really notice what’s going on in your body,” she said.

She stretched her mind and her spirit, combating the mental obstacles as well as the physical. There was even the possibility she would have to stop playing permanently.

“It was so overwhelming,” she said, “how hard that is physically and mentally to be told you have to change your whole playing style, to deal with that emotional fallout.”

***
Ultimately, what she needed was time. “It took months, a couple of years, even. But I was really dedicated.” She kept up appointments with the osteopath for a long time and did the slow, grueling work necessary to get back to the piano.

“There was a big mental component to it, learning the warming up of the arms, changing the way the elbow is held,” she said. The physical part was also huge, naturally. “He did manipulations on my arms, let the energy flow into my muscles, changed my posture.”

Despite the obstacles she has overcome, she looks for the positive side of the experience. For example, three years into her journey, she founded a children’s theater company in Williamsburg called Stagelights as a sort of outlet for her frustration. It has been a huge success, and is currently in its 17th season.

Her teaching has also benefited. Before the journey with tendonitis began, Zwelling could demonstrate what she wanted her piano students to do. After the pain set in, she had to be more creative. “I was forced to verbalize what I was trying to say, like what kinds of positions we’re using and why we’re doing it this way,” she said. “Before it had been kind of instinctive.”

Now she is through with what she called her ritual, icing her arms religiously and driving a six hour round trip for regular appointments. But she still never sits down to practice without adequate preparation. “I go to a sink and run warm water over my whole arm,” she said, aware of how precious it is that she can still play.

Zwelling has had to cut back the number of solo performances she can do. That kind of practicing, six hours a day minimum, is no longer in the cards for her.

“I’m not doing like I used to, I’m not practicing four to six hours a day, I know I have to take breaks, and I’m not doing solo recitals,” she said.

The job she has now, though, teaching, performing freelance in chamber groups and other ensembles, and bringing in musical groups for the Ewell Concert Series, all on top of overseeing the Applied Music department at the College, isn’t so far from her vision coming out of graduate school. She smiles and glances at her hands. “At least I can still do this.”

Measuring Spiritual Intelligence

2009-05-08T11:04:00.000+08:00
There is a great deal of disagreement over the measurement of spiritual intelligence. Many suggest that this ability set cannot be measured by traditional means, while others maintain that, like most psychological constructs, some degree of measurement is possible. David B King of Trent University is currently developing a self-report measure of spiritual intelligence, called the Spiritual Intelligence Self-Report Inventory (SISRI). (see http://www.dbking.net/spiritualintelligence/)

Due to its varying definitions and models, a number of different indicators and measures of spiritual intelligence have been proposed. Many authors use the term spiritual quotient, following a trend that started with the intelligence quotient or IQ and later emotional intelligence or EQ. While some measures may be founded in science, others are geared more towards popular use by the public.

William Frank Diedrich offers the following definition and measurement of spiritual intelligence:

* Spiritual Quotient (SQ)

Most recently, it has been defined as "choosing between the ego and Spirit (Higher Self)" . This definition is based upon the root words: spiritus, meaning breath. Spirit is the breath of life. Intelligentia, meaning "to choose between". There are three major aspects of spiritual intelligence. They are:

1. Identifying with one's Higher Self or Spirit rather than with the ego. That is, you are not your body, your problems, your past, your finances, your job, your gender, or your ethnicity. These are each roles you play. You are a spiritual being having a human experience.

2. Understanding Universal Law--Cause and Effect. Spiritual Intelligence means that you take 100 % responsibility for your life, your situation, and for yourself. You recognize that you are the creator of your life and that your thinking, your beliefs, and your assumptions create your world. This means no blaming!

3. Non-attachment. As a spiritual being you are unattached to outcomes, forms, or experiences. Your well-being comes from within you, by way of your spiritual identity.

Spiritual Intelligence is developed by practicing these three aspects. The tools of Spiritual Intelligence include prayer, meditation, contemplation, conscious awareness of one's tendencies toward fear or anger, shifting one's emotional state away from fear, and the ongoing daily practice of staying conscious of one's thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. This definition is based on the writings of William Frank Diedrich. For further reading see http://www.noblaming.com/spiritintel.htm

Some practical applications of Spiritual Intelligence

1. Acceptance of adversity rather than raging against it. Not resorting to blame, guilt, rationalising, anger, despair, denial and other typical defense mechanisms.
2. Using materials preciously and avoiding waste. Recycling, reusing things wherever possible, reducing waste and repairing things instead of replacing them.
3. Being grateful for everything including adversity.
4. Having the capacity to see one's ego (Witness Consciousness) and choose whether to go with the ego's habitual tendency or do something different.
5. Apologising for one's mistakes and making amends wherever possible.
6. Seeing the inherent beauty of everything and everyone.
7. Having a positive attitude.
8. Treating everyone and everything with compassion and gratitude including tools and machines.
9. Leaving every place you go better than you found it.
10. Respect for the environment and bio-diversity as having inherent as well as practical value

With Spiritual Intelligence towards your Goals

2009-05-08T10:43:00.003+08:00

Spirituality refers to what is most essential to the heart of human experience. Spiritual Intelligence® refers to various skills and abilities that empower you to live in harmony with your highest values and move unswervingly towards your life goals

* with a Heart that is open and flexible,
* with Enthusiasm,
* with Awareness of your present experience and of the presence of the divine,
* with Respect for and service to others and the world, and
* guided by the Traditions of your highest values and ethics.

Modelling Spiritual Intelligence

2009-05-08T10:36:00.000+08:00
David B King (2007)

David B King (2007) has undertaken research on spiritual intelligence at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada. King defines spiritual intelligence as:

"...a set of adaptive mental capacities which are based on nonmaterial and transcendent aspects of reality, specifically those which are related to the nature of one’s existence, personal meaning, transcendence, and heightened states of consciousness. When applied, these processes are adaptive in their ability to facilitate unique means of problem-solving, abstract-reasoning, and coping."[citation needed]

King further proposes 4 core abilities or capacities of spiritual intelligence:

1. Critical Existential Thinking:
The capacity to critically contemplate the nature of existence, reality, the universe, space, time, and other existential/metaphysical issues; also the capacity to contemplate non-existential issues in relation to one’s existence (i.e., from an existential perspective).

2. Personal Meaning Production:
The ability to derive personal meaning and purpose from all physical & mental experiences, including the capacity to create and master a life purpose.

3. Transcendental Awareness:
The capacity to identify transcendent dimensions/patterns of the self (i.e., a transpersonal or transcendent self), of others, and of the physical world (e.g., nonmaterialism) during normal states of consciousness, accompanied by the capacity to identify their relationship to one’s self and to the physical.

4. Conscious State Expansion:
The ability to enter and exit higher states of consciousness (e.g. pure consciousness, cosmic consciousness, unity, oneness) and other states of trance at one’s own discretion (as in deep contemplation, meditation, prayer, etc.).

For more information, visit: http://www.dbking.net/spiritualintelligence/

Modelling Spiritual Intelligence

2009-05-08T09:58:00.001+08:00
Frances Vaughan (2002) offers the following description:

"Spiritual intelligence is concerned with the inner life of mind and spirit and its relationship to being in the world. Spiritual intelligence implies a capacity for a deep understanding of existential questions and insight into multiple levels of consciousness. Spiritual intelligence also implies awareness of spirit as the ground of being or as the creative life force of evolution. If the evolution of life from stardust to mineral, vegetable, animal, and human existence implies some form of intelligence rather than being a purely random process, it might be called spiritual. Spiritual intelligence emerges as consciousness evolves into an ever-deepening awareness of matter, life, body, mind, soul, and spirit. Spiritual intelligence, then, is more than individual mental ability. It appears to connect the personal to the transpersonal and the self to spirit. Spiritual intelligence goes beyond conventional psychological development. In addition to self-awareness, it implies awareness of our relationship to the transcendent, to each other, to the earth and all beings. Working as a psychotherapist, my impression is that spiritual intelligence opens the heart, illuminates the mind, and inspires the soul, connecting the individual human psyche to the underlying ground of being. Spiritual intelligence can be developed with practice and can help a person distinguish reality from illusion. It may be expressed in and culture as love, wisdom, and service.

Modelling Spiritual Intelligence

2009-05-08T09:51:00.000+08:00
Kathleen Noble (2000/2001)

Kathleen Noble (2000/2001) identifies spiritual intelligence as an innate human potential. She agrees with Emmons' (2000) core abilities and adds two others:

1. The conscious recognition that physical reality is embedded within a larger, multidimensional reality with which we interact, consciously and unconsciously, on a moment to moment basis.

2. The conscious pursuit of psychological health, not only for ourselves but also for the sake of the global community.

Modelling Spiritual Intelligence

2009-05-08T09:48:00.000+08:00
Tony Buzan's (2001)

It is described in Tony Buzan's (2001) book The Power of Spiritual intelligence as 'Awareness of the world and your place in it'. Spiritual intelligence is supposed to be one of the 7 intelligences described by Tony Buzan. Robert Emmons (2000) defines spiritual intelligence as "the adaptive use of spiritual information to facilitate everyday problem solving and goal attainment." Kathleen Noble (2000/2001) agrees with Emmons' (2000) definition and adds that spiritual intelligence is an inherent ability. Zohar & Marshall (2003) define spiritual intelligence as "the intelligence with which we can place our actions and our lives in a wider, richer, meaning-giving context; the intelligence with which we can assess that one course of action or one life-path is more meaningful than another." David B King (2007) has more recently defined spiritual intelligence as:

"...a set of adaptive mental capacities which are based on nonmaterial and transcendent aspects of reality, specifically those which are related to the nature of one’s existence, personal meaning, transcendence, and heightened states of consciousness. When applied, these processes are adaptive in their ability to facilitate unique means of problem-solving, abstract-reasoning, and coping.

Modelling Spiritual Intelligence

2009-05-08T09:45:00.000+08:00
Robert Emmons (2000)

Robert Emmons (2000) defines spiritual intelligence as "the adaptive use of spiritual information to facilitate everyday problem solving and goal attainment. He originally proposed 5 components of spiritual intelligence:

1. The capacity to transcend the physical and material.

2. The ability to experience heightened states of consciousness.

3. The ability to sanctify everyday experience.

4. The ability to utilize spiritual resources to solve problems.

5. The capacity to be virtuous.

The fifth capacity was later removed due to its focus on human behaviour rather than ability, thereby not meeting previously established scientific criteria for intelligence.

Singh G. (2008)defined spiritual intelligence as " an innate ability of thinking and understanding of spiritual phenomenon and to guide the everyday behaviour by spiritual ideology"

Modelling Spiritual Intelligence

2009-05-08T09:41:00.002+08:00
Zohar and Marshall (1997)

Danah Zohar coined the term »spiritual intelligence« and introduced the idea in her book ReWiring the Corporate Brain: Using the New Science to Rethink How We Structure and Lead Organizations (ISBN 9971512149) in 1997. Later, together with Ian Marshall she developed the concept, which was introduced in 1999 at The Masters Forum . In the year 2000, Danah Zohar and Ian Marshall published a book, SQ: Ultimate intelligence. In 2004 the authors upgraded the concept with notion of Spiritual Capital and demonstrated the crucial link between SQ, SC, and sustainability[citation needed]. By their definition Spiritual Intelligence is the intelligence with which we access our deepest meanings, purposes, and highest motivations

It is the intelligence that makes us whole, that gives us our integrity. It is the soul's intelligence, the intelligence of the deep self. It is the intelligence with which we ask fundamental questions and with which we reframe our answers.

The word “spiritual” in relation to the intelligence has no necessary connection with organized religion. A person may be high in SQ but have no religious faith or belief of any kind[citation needed]. Equally, a person may be very religious but low in SQ (SC)[citation needed]. The word spiritual in the Zohar/Marshal concept comes from the Latin word spiritus which means “that which gives life or vitality to a system”

Zohar and Marshall introduced 12 qualities of SQ. They derive these principles from the qualities that define complex adaptive systems. In biology, complex adaptive systems are living systems that create order out of chaos, they create order and information and defy the law of entropy.

Those principles are:

* Self-Awareness: Knowing what I believe in and value, and what deeply motivates me
* Spontaneity: Living in and being responsive to the moment
* Being Vision- and Value-Led: Acting from principles and deep beliefs, and living accordingly
* Holism: Seeing larger patterns, relationships, and connections; having a sense of belonging
* Compassion: Having the quality of "feeling-with" and deep empathy
* Celebration of Diversity: Valuing other people for their differences, not despite them
* Field Independence: Standing against the crowd and having one's own convictions
* Humility: Having the sense of being a player in a larger drama, of one's true place in the world
* Tendency to Ask Fundamental "Why?" Questions: Needing to understand things and get to the bottom of them
* Ability to Reframe: Standing back from a situation or problem and seeing the bigger picture; seeing problems in a wider context
* Positive Use of Adversity: Learning and growing from mistakes, setbacks, and suffering
* Sense of Vocation: Feeling called upon to serve, to give something back

Spiritual Intelligence

2009-05-08T08:35:00.000+08:00
Spiritual intelligence is a term used to discern a suite or set of propensities comprising: perceptions, intuitions, cognitions, etc., related to spirituality and/or religiosity, especially spiritual capital. It has been discredited by its detractors as pseudoscientific due to its employment in popular psychology and New Age discourse. As the term and phenomenon of spirituality and the anthropological and sociological dimension of this human endeavour is challenging to define - indeed, a persistent incorrigible intangible - it poses a significant challenge for scientific methodology and analyses which for veracity, necessitates categorical criteria to model, chart and compare. In spite of both its popular currency and its protracted retraction, spiritual intelligence as an emergent, viable construct within psychology, bolstered particularly by Transpersonal Psychology, is receiving considerable scholarship.

Howard Gardner, the originator of the theory of multiple intelligences, chose not to include spiritual intelligence amongst his "intelligences" due to the challenge of codifying quantifiable scientific criteria. Instead, Gardner suggested an "existential intelligence" as viable. Gardner's peers have responded with research that charts existential thinking as fundamental to spirituality. Notwithstanding, Gardner established the scientific foundation within the discipline of education theory and its interdisciplinarity, that has yielded the emergence of spiritual intelligence discourse.

(Frank Sinatra on My Way)

2009-05-07T21:16:00.004+08:00

And now, the end is near;
And so I face the final curtain.
My friend, Ill say it clear,
Ill state my case, of which Im certain.

Ive lived a life thats full.
Ive traveled each and evry highway;
And more, much more than this,
I did it my way.

Regrets, Ive had a few;
But then again, too few to mention.
I did what I had to do
And saw it through without exemption.

I planned each charted course;
Each careful step along the byway,
But more, much more than this,
I did it my way.

Yes, there were times, Im sure you knew
When I bit off more than I could chew.
But through it all, when there was doubt,
I ate it up and spit it out.
I faced it all and I stood tall;
And did it my way.

Ive loved, Ive laughed and cried.
Ive had my fill; my share of losing.
And now, as tears subside,
I find it all so amusing.

To think I did all that;
And may I say - not in a shy way,
No, oh no not me,
I did it my way.

For what is a man, what has he got?
If not himself, then he has naught.
To say the things he truly feels;
And not the words of one who kneels.
The record shows I took the blows -
And did it my way!

I Take My Own Way

2009-05-07T21:15:00.002+08:00

frank sinatraI have been through so many way in posting article in my blog. It started by copying and pasting someone else’s, quoting from the famous, cheating from my dear bloggers, write the same topic like others, write from another blogger’s idea, writes from other blogger’s enlightenment, inspired by friends, write everything about my daughter, write everything about my wife, write something related with my experiences, write on the journeys I had, write my hobbies, write anything in scratches, and write some dreams-hopes and loves.

All that seems like what a blogger do. So what the differences I have compare to others? May be nothing, but wait a minute…….may be there are some things different. I wrote from what I have that no body don’t have. I wrote my own experiences, I wrote on the only one Audrey, the only one wife, the only one style, the only one thought, the only one mouth, the only one hearth. I should revise my previous words…I’m different from others.

So, when somebody ask you what the differences you have compare with others are, then may be the best answer is that you are the only one, God creates me as one body, not two or three of me.

Right now may be 2 billions people out there with their own thoughts, behaviors, acts, feelings, and habits, not even a single one people has the copy of him self. Off course that because we are amazing creations of God.

Being blogger is a responsibility for me. Being blogger means I can express my own thoughts and feelings with my own words. But I shouldn’t use my words to attacks somebody, I must not hurt anybody with my words, I use my words for appreciating God’s creation, I use it to thank God, I stay in my blog to praise the kindness, I use it to help someone else, I use the words for developing my self, I don’t spread the hates, I just spread the loves. That is all my style. You better believe it….At least I try to do so.

The same things happen in life. I must clearly understand who I am, what I am, where I am, and how I am. By knowing those questions, I can decide what I’m going to do, what is my priority, what I will do for others, what I will do for my environment, what I can give to my family, what my needs are. In another words, we all have a mission in life, you’ll know what your missions are by knowing first who you are. So many people ask what the life is, the same question I have till now, and I’m still collecting the answer piece by piece. At least, you are the one who should decide and answer the above questions about your self.

So many images out there with so many characters, you can pick many of them to be customized to your image. But still it’s all going to be someone else’s image, not yours. Even when you hire a professional to change your ‘look’, still you’ll end up as someone else. I don’t wanna be someone else. I just want to be my self. I don’t want to have a complicated life with so many images. I just want to be a simple guy.

There were times when I had jealousy to the other, especially with my old friends who become a wealthy guys and seems very happy with their life. I took long time to overcome that feeling, until I decided to thank God for what I had in life, for everything He gave. I also decided to congratulate my friends for their prosperity and wishing them for better success. I decided to be happy….pardon?…Yes, I decided to be happy. Happiness is a matter of a decision. I will stay in sadness if I choose it, if I choose not to thank God for every little thing He gave. I choose my own way to be happy. It wont be necessary for me to follow someone else’s way or even to get my goals through someone else’s image. I know who I am, I decide everything for my own life. I happy because I choose my own way.

The Power of Smile

2009-05-07T21:12:00.003+08:00

“Everytime you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing.” (Mother Teresa)

I see you when you smile
I thank you when you smile
I do my pray when you smile
I work hard when you smile
I'm full of joy when you smile
I thank God when you smile.......look what your smile can do for me!!!

Smiles on Audrey's face make me & my wife feel happy, there is nothing in this world to compare. Your papi & mami don't have anything to give beside love. Love is the only thing we have to pay your smiles. Your naif smile is always our best moment. We cried when those smiles gone, we cry when the ilness take the smiles away, we want your smiles last forever. Sometimes I catch your smiles through the camera, believe me the pictures of your smiles will remind us how precious you are. Believe me I'll do anything to keep the smiles on your face.

Time For Change, a Motley Crue lyric

2009-05-07T21:11:00.001+08:00
I heard some kids telling me
How theyve lost all the faith in the way
Theyve been talking world peace
And the wars in the streets
The lines on their faces so deep
A revolution, or reach out
And touch the day
Were overdue child

Change
Now its time for a change
Nothing stays the same
Now its time for a change

I feel the future in the hands
Of our youth will be safe
No more lies
Old, tired fools tell our future
With tarot cards, and lie of crime
The lines on their faces so deep
A revolution, or reach out
And touch the day
Were overdue child
Change
Now its time for a change
Nothing stays the same
Now its time for a change
Ill change
Ill change
Not tomorrow but today

Change
Now its time for a change
Nothing stays the same
Now its time for a change

Anthony Robbins said

2009-05-07T21:10:00.001+08:00
“If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten”.

The Art of Change

2009-05-07T21:09:00.001+08:00
Many times I read & wrote about changing in life, changing in work, & changing in behavior. But do we really need that changing? A question that strike me in sudden. Almost for the last 3 years I’ve been considering to change some things in my life. Here are the reasons why I need changing:

* What does God want me to be?
* What does God want me to do?
* I’m a dynamic person who hate being static.
* The world is changing all the time
* I want to improve my life quality.
* I want to give the best for my family
* I’m a father now, I need to be a role model for my daughter
* I need more income to get more things
* I’m a married guy, I’m not a bachelor anymore
* I want to add more skill & knowledge
* The more I study, the more foolish I am
* I like new things
* I like variations
* I can not do the same thing all the time
* I can not do all the things for my self and by my self
* I need to have social life
* I’ll improve my life for God
* I must leave my sins behind
* I should leave bad environment behind
* I hate corruption
* I’m doing my obligation
* I want more friends
* I want to have more experiences
* I want to go to Europe
* I want to have more picnics with my family
* I want my money works for me
* I want this, want that, need this, need that, be like this, be like that, and much more…….

So now am I sure to change?...DEFINITELY!!!!…I CHOOSE TO HAVE CHANGING.

Empathy(Inspiring Word)

2009-05-07T21:07:00.000+08:00
Me, my wife and Audrey were on the way home from my parent’s house last night in the middle of heavy rain. From a distance we saw a guy walked with a heavy loads on his shoulder. The loads are two boxes with a portable stove inside one of the boxes, while in the other box there some fried foods. The foods are covered with transparent plastic cover. Yes he was the fried food seller whose selling the food door to door along the village road. But last night was not a good night for him, heavy rain came since the afternoon, that’s why the food was still so many on the tray. People were not around on the road, no body went out from their house during the rain. We were very sorry for him; my wife told me that may be when he come home with so many foods are still there in the box; and when his wife ask how much money that he get, he’ll be so sad. The sadness for not able to give a little money for the food and other needs for his family for the next day. We can imagine the struggle of that man to afford his family. Then my wife told Audrey to thank God for what Papi and Mami have been given to her. I said to her: “Just see that poor man, he has to work very hard just to give meals for his kids, Audrey must thank God for every meals given”.

Last night we felt like we are very lucky and very rich people. We are full with so many bless. Suddenly we were so ashamed for the jealousy and the ungenerous behavior that we have did to somebody else. I am also the one who should be ashamed of my self because I always complain for everything; I should learn from that man, even under a heavy rain he still walked and tried to sell the foods for somebody that he might be met on the street.

Yesterday I just posted ‘39,700 Labor Lost Their Job’ that shows us the sad fact during the economic crisis up to date. Many of them do not know how to face the crisis, many of them are desperate for having new job to feed their family. Many of them will meet a hard life in their daily life. They will suffer from the high food price, from various needs they can not afford. Until they will come to a certain point that they can not withstand; there will be so many crimes committed by the frustrated unemployment labor. Just imagine when the kids are suffered from hunger, or from lacking of nutrition, or when so many babies don’t have their milk anymore….

So how to help them?

Again…. I repeat my previous words that I don’t have any answer for that question. I just have the empathy for them, I only have passion for them. I don’t have solution for the unemployment, neither how to give them the job. I only committed to start to put my attention on my surrounding, the nearest people. Let me see what I can do for them, may be I’ll hire a house maid that I’ll take from the wife of an unemployment labor whose live in the neighborhood. Or may be I can give some of my food to the one who suffered from the hunger. And of course I will always pray for them so they will always have the bless from The Almighty.

Recently I got an enrichment from my friend Tikno whose commented my previous posting “I Don’t Like It”; he said: “Why you don’t like poverty?” The very first impression of that question was “what a simple question”, but I realized later on that was not a simple one. It’s a touchy question. When I wrote that I don’t like poverty is just simply because I think poverty is the source of crimes, and the source of life’s disorder. But then I found out that there is another perspective of poverty that can lead in to a method or a way of life to have a very simple life, but of course this is a choice of how to live a life with simplicity. It’s a choice of having minimum needs. Some people feel that if they have much money then their life will be easy, but seems there is no easy life if they still have even much more needs. When you succeeded in limiting your needs then you’ll have an easy life; that’s the basic concept of having a simple life. ….thanks Tikno, you have opened my eyes.

There was also a Franciscan Padre who showed me how to live in poverty and he amazingly survived and could serve the people with so much loves to give. Yet he doesn’t have decent cloth to wear, he still has smiles on his face. He has thin body, but he moves so quick, he has a large of energy. He doesn’t have any complain for his life, he tanks God for everything he had…wow…What a role model for me!!!…May be the way this Padre live can be spread to the unemployment people, so they still have spirits in life and finally by a positive motivation they can overcome the crisis.

Do We Have Talent?

2009-05-07T20:53:00.002+08:00
Talent is natural aptitude or skill; people possessing such aptitude or skill (Concise Oxford Dictionary-Tenth Edition). Do you have one? If your answer is no, then I must help you to answer it.

Can you talk, walk, run, write, read, punch, kick, or do physical work such as farming, sewing, sawing, crafting, hunting, fishing, swimming, cycling,etc? If you answer the above question with one “yes” minimum; then you have a talent.

May be some of you are thinking that talents is such a difficult things to find in you. May be some of you are thinking that a talent is something that suppose to be big and great like a great voice from a professional singer or just like Chris John who has many talents in sports. Just go back to the first sentence of this article: “Talent is natural aptitude or skill”, nothing mentioned about greatness or very good skills.

Suddenly this talent thing came across in my head when I captured a moment of Audrey sitting on the floor and drawing like a pro, with her eyes steered to her draw and her hand scratching the paper using crayon. Does she have a drawing or painting talent? By seeing her draws, I can not tell you that they are good draws, they’re look more like abstracts, or a bundle of rope. They’re nothing special. She can draw a balloon quiet right; and she also can write the one number…hahaha. But what amazed me is she can identify and mentioned the colors exactly. That’s why I can not say that she has a talent of drawing and painting, but one thing for sure she has a talent for knowing the colors and a talent for making a balloon draw.

Here I’d like to share an article from our Church News which taken the story from Inspirasi Batin 2008 by Kanisius Publisher:

“Everybody is gifted with talent. May be we don’t have a degree or any other certification, but we are gifted with strong body to work, or gifted with sharp instinct in business, or the ability in trading . The problem comes when we trap to compare with somebody else’s talent, and we want to have somebody else’s talent. After that we are fall into jealousy and disgrace our own talent. This behavior will make us not capable to see all the gifts from God. By doing that we will not be happy all the time, because happiness is related with our willingness to use and develop our talent. A farmer is happy because he planted his land with the knowledge he has. A public bus driver always feel tired after all day work but he is happy because he believes that he has done the best for his family. Many people feel that they have only a little talent but they thank God for it by using it and developing it intensively. They often feel that they are surrounded by happiness, not like the others who have the talent but never thank God for what they have.Today God remind us to take the responsibility. Do we use talent gifted by God? If we always complaining for not having something or we don’t have good changing in our life, may be that is because we don’t thank God and do not use the talent from God well.”

A waste of good talent in 'Rules of Engagement'

2009-05-07T20:50:00.000+08:00
The Jakarta Post , Jakarta | Fri, 08/31/2001 7:21 AM | Life

By Joko E.H. Anwar

Rules of Engagement, ** out of four stars; Drama/Thriller, 128 minutes; Starring Tommy Lee Jones, Samuel L. Jackson, Guy Pearce, Bruce Greenwood, Ben Kingsley, Anne Archer; Directed by William Friedkin; A Paramount Pictures presentation

JAKARTA (JP): I always find two kinds of films intellectually stimulating, one on politics and two if it is a satire.Wag the Dog is among the recent best in this category along with military film-like A Few Good Men.

These two categories usually make reliable subjects for a film due to their exclusivity from the rest of the world. They have their own codes of honor, which ordinary people find amusing, and when these codes are judged with our common sense of morality, it is then we get our time for brain exercise.

Still, military-themed movies are preferable since they usually involve politics as well, a double treat for the audience.

Marine courtroom drama Rules of Engagement, however, can do more. However, it fails to engage the audience due to the filmmakers' lack of faith on which truth they really stand for.

It's as if the filmmakers left the final resolution of the movie for us to decide while they were still trying to convince themselves on the issue.

We can clearly see this from the lack of real ending in the film. It seems like the film just stopped, leaving the audience hungry for a payoff after watching this pretty long film.

The film itself opens pretty well, making me hope that it would be as gripping as the underrated military drama The Siege with Denzel Washington and Annette Bening, which shared a similar theme, and, just like Rules of Engagement, only received luke warm reviews.

However, as you sit through patiently for more than two hours, you will not feel properly rewarded.

Excellent Jackson and good Lee Jones play two marine officers, Terry Childers and Hayes Hodges respectively, whose friendship goes way back to the Vietnam War in 1968 where they fought side by side.

In the war, Childers saved Hodges' life by shooting an unarmed POW, which is against the Marine's Rules of Engagement, but he also released another which makes us believe that he is basically a good person.

Wounded in the war, Hodges becomes unfit for real action. Still, he cannot get away, and manages to get a law degree and becomes a Marine lawyer.

Childers, however, continues his career on an excellent path, leading a rescue mission into Yemen where the U.S. ambassador is trapped inside his office with angry demonstrators firing from outside.

The mission turns ugly after Childers orders his men to open fire on the crowd. Eighty-three people are killed and hundreds more wounded.

The next day, the massacre, which also takes the life of women and children, becomes headlines in every newspaper in the U.S., and probably in the world.

The official statement has it that the protesters were unarmed, although National Security Advisor Bill Sokal (Bruce Greenwood) has a videotape which can prove otherwise.

However, Sokal thinks that it is better to blame Childers for the killings instead of the entire country.

Soon, Childers is court-martialled and his career is in jeopardy.

As expected, he wants Hodges to defend him. In fact, it seems only Hodges, and not even the ambassador (Ben Kingsley), can help him.

The second half of the film focuses on the trial where prosecuting attorney Major Biggs (Pearce) is determined to bring Childers down.

None of the trial scenes, however, is interesting enough to keep us watching. After a few scenes, I did not even dare compare the film with the great A Few Good Men, which also tells of a decorated Marine officer being tried for misconduct.

Anne Archer, who plays the ambassador's wife, testifies against her husband and helps to get Childers off the hook, seems to be nothing but a character who can be disposed of.

She is great but the film does not give her space to do more.

Jackson and Lee Jones are reliable always. But they hardly had their moments like they did in their earlier films.

The film remains a misfire from a director of such good movies like The Exorcist and The French Connection. So, maybe, you should just wait until it appears on VCD.