Chances are that you answered yes to all three questions. That’s life. Sometimes even after we put in our best effort and prayed hard, things just don’t go our way in the end. Every human being who has ever lived on this planet has had the same kind of experience. The rich, the poor, the successful, the not-so-successful, the good, the bad, the winners, the losers… they all went through the same journey. But what separates the winners and the losers is how they respond to it.

There are two different ways to respond to what had happened to you. You can choose to:

1. Live a life of deliberate creation; or
2. Live a life of chain reaction.

If you are not happy with your job, you can choose to react to it by complaining about it, feeling frustrated about it, getting annoyed by your managers or, worse still, being rude towards your customers. Even if you channel your reaction towards everything that happened to you at work, you’re still not changing the fact that you’re working at a job that you’re not happy about. As one thing leads to another, you will continue to wind down the negative spiral and making things even worse for you personally. On the other hand, you can choose to create a completely new situation by voicing out your concern to the right authority about your dissatisfaction, understanding the culture and adapting yourself to it or, better still, quit that job for one you’re happy about.

If you are unhappy in your marriage, don’t react towards your spouse as if everything is his/her fault. Create new experiences, new understanding, or perhaps a new relationship with each other!

Life itself is a creation. Every moment we are alive is an opportunity for new creation. Reacting to something is a complete waste of your time now for what you have done in the past. Most people who failed to achieve great success are those who react towards life, circumstances, events, people and basically everything around them. They let life push them around instead of pushing back and live life. That’s why they are the greatest complainers, whiners, blamers, justifiers, excuse makers, and they make almost all of those 55 famous alibis! Whenever you offer them a new opportunity to break free from their dissatisfaction, they will automatically think with their “but”.

Embrace the attitude of being in creation, not reaction. Create new possibilities for new outcomes. Life will continue to throw us challenges and alter our paths along the way. Keep creating. If you react to every event that life brings about, you will end up walking the path that was not designed by you, but by those events, circumstances, people and things that you don’t like. Being in reaction means you’re giving away your power of directing your own life; and you’re giving away that power to those events, circumstances, people and things that you don’t like. In short, you don’t own your life. They do. But if you embrace the attitude of being in creation instead, you will take all those challenges as stepping stones and continue stepping into the direction of your dream. Being in creation means you have control and power over how your life should be, will be and must be. In short, you own your own life.

“It is in your moment of decision that your destiny is shaped.”

—Anthony Robbins

Choose wisely how you would respond to life from now on. Make sharp decisions. Live life with passion!

Further reading

• How To Have All Your Wishes Come True
• Do Pain And Pleasure Use You?
• Take Action!
• What I Saw At The Graveyard
• Dying Professor’s Last Lecture

Life is the best teacher of all. Most of the time, life does not talk to you. It just sort of pushes you around. Each push is life saying, “Wake up. There’s something I want you to learn.” If you learn life’s lessons, you will do well. If not, life will just continue to push you around.

People do two things. Some just let life push them around. Others get angry and push back. But they push back against their boss, or their job, or their husband or wife. They do not know it’s life that’s pushing. Life pushes all of us around. Some give up. Others fight. A few learn the lesson and move on. They welcome life pushing them around. To these few people, it means they need and want to learn something. They learn and move on. Most quit, and a few will fight.

If you learn this lesson, you will grow into a wise, wealthy and happy young man. If you don’t, you will spend your life blaming a job, low pay or your boss for your problems. You’ll live life hoping for that big break that will solve all your money problems.

Or if you’re the kind of person who has no guts, you just give up every time life pushes you. If you’re that kind of person, you’ll live all your life playing it safe, doing the right things, saving yourself for some event that never happens. Then, you die a boring old man. You’ll have lots of friends who really like you because you were such a nice hard-working guy. You spent a life playing it safe, doing the right things. But the truth is, you let life push you into submission. Deep down you were terrified of taking risks. You really wanted to win, but the fear of losing was greater than the excitement of winning. Deep inside, you and only you will know you didn’t go for it. You chose to play it safe.

—Rich Dad teaching Robert Kiyosaki his first lesson

Source: Rich Dad Poor Dad

Further reading

• Our Time On Earth
• What I Saw At The Graveyard
• Do You Have The Power To Own Your Own Life?
• How To Have All Your Wishes Come True
• Do Pain And Pleasure Use You?

“The secret of success is learning how to use pain and pleasure instead of having pain and pleasure use you. If you do that, you’re in control of your life. If you don’t, life controls you.”

—Anthony Robbins

Today, in one of my weekly trainings, I shared about the Pain-Pleasure Principle (PPP) that was popularised by Anthony Robbins. The PPP explains that all decisions and choices that we make in life are motivated by either:

• gaining the pleasure of; or
• avoiding the pain of not

making those decisions and choices.

Think about it. You’ve made the choice of getting into that job, relationship or business at some point in time. You did it probably because of the promises you saw in it. Or you probably did it because of the pain of not having it. Either way, you were motivated by the PPP.

In the training today, I asked the participants what were the motivating factors (pleasure) behind their reasons to want to achieve success in life. Most shouted out the promises of having more time and money freedom, the sense of achievement and the ability to leave a legacy for their generations to come. I then asked them about what were the pain of not achieving success. They shouted even louder this time. “Being looked down at”, “Being criticised”, “Tarnished reputation”, “Being broke”, “Feeling like a loser” etc. were just some of the most common reasons.

“People change only when they hurt enough that they have to, learn enough that they want to, or receive enough that they are able to.”

—John C. Maxwell

Personally, I believe that one of the ways to use pain and pleasure effectively is to:

1. list down in a piece of paper all the pleasure you will gain from making that decision or choice and taking the necessary actions; and
2. on another piece of paper, list down all the pain you will get for NOT taking the necessary actions and thus not having the results you desired.

The first list will be your source of motivation and willpower. Look into this list whenever you feel that you are about to breakdown or give up. These are your intentions—your very reasons for doing what you’re doing.

The second list will be your source of urgency. Look into this list whenever you feel like you’re not fast enough in achieving your results, or stagnant. Many people completely ignore this list because they fear being reminded of the things in this list so they can avoid taking actions and thus avoiding the responsibilities to make things happen. But we all know that we owe it to ourselves to create what we want in life, and no one else.

If it’s to be, it’s up to me.

You only have one life in this lifetime. Own it. Live it. Make it the best life you’ve ever had in this lifetime.

Further reading

• How To Have All Your Wishes Come True
• Take Action!
• What I Saw At The Graveyard
• Do You Think With Your BUT?
• Dying Professor’s Last Lecture

“When you’re 18, you worry about what everybody is thinking of you; when you’re 40, you don’t give a darn what anybody thinks of you; when you’re 60, you realize nobody’s been thinking about you at all.”

Surprise, surprise! Most of the time, nobody’s thinking about you at all!

They are too busy worrying about their own lives, and if they are thinking about you at all, they are wondering what you are thinking about them!

People think about themselves, not you.

All the time you are wasting worrying about what other people think about your ideas, your goals, your clothes, your hair, and your home could all be better spent on thinking about and doing the things that will achieve your goals.

Further reading

• Do Pain And Pleasure Use You?
• Our Time On Earth
• Do You Have The Power To Own Your Own Life?
• How To Have All Your Wishes Come True
• How To Make A New Year’s Resolution That LASTS!

“It’s a shame you have to be away from home and your family so much,” he said. “Let me tell you something that has helped me keep a good perspective on my own priorities. You see, one day I sat down and did a little arithmetic. The average person lives about seventy-five years. Now then, I multiplied 75 times 52 and came up with 3,900, which is the number of Sundays that the average person has in his lifetime.

“It took me until I was fifty-five years old to think about all this in any detail,” he continued, “and by that time I had lived through over 2,800 Sundays. I got to thinking that if I lived to be seventy-five, I only had about a thousand of them left to enjoy.”

He went on to explain that he bought 1,000 marbles and put them in a clear plastic container in his favourite work area at home. “Every Sunday since then,” he said, “I have taken one marble out and thrown it away. I found that by watching the marbles diminish, I focused more on the really important things in life. There’s nothing like watching your time here on this earth run out to help get your priorities straight.”

Then the older gentleman finished, “Now let me tell you one last thought before I sign off and take my lovely wife out to breakfast. This morning, I took the very last marble out of the container. I figure if I make it until next Sunday, then I have been given a little extra time.”

We can’t choose whether we will get any more time, but we can choose what we do with it. You write your own destiny. Make the most of the time and talent that God gives you.

Further reading

• What I Saw At The Graveyard
• How To Have All Your Wishes Come True
• Push Back & Live Life
• Do Pain And Pleasure Use You?
• The 18/40/60 Rule Of Life

Today, I had a different experience from all those times I visited the grave in the past years.

As I looked at the huge graveyard, I saw hundreds of tombstones. They are all different in colour, design and size. But there’s one thing that is common. Each one represents a deceased person. Each represents someone who had once lived—someone who had once written a story called “My Life”.

I was thinking to myself: How did they look like when they were alive? What kind of persons were they? How did they live their lives? Did they struggle financially or did they live a carefree lifestyle? Were they once young, ambitious and energetic youngsters too? Did they enjoy what they were doing in life? What kind of dreams did they have back then?

And the question that stood out among the rest that struck my mind was: Did they bury together with them their unaccomplished dreams, their unattained goals, their passion, their ambition, their dignity and their self-worth?

I “saw” a new perspective towards life.

Life indeed is a journey. This journey is unique as it’s a single-way journey. There’s no “U-turn”, there’s no “Reverse” gear (or “Rewind”); there’s no “Pause”, no “Fast Forward”. Life is just that journey. That unique journey. In fact, you have only one chance to live through this journey—no second chances.

Imagine if there is a gigantic satellite camera that captures every single moment of your life in great detail, with narrations of what you were thinking at any moment, from the day you were born until today. All these pieces will be put together to compile a movie called “[Your Name]: My Life” with you being the main character. This movie will be broadcasted to the world after you exhaled your last breath. What kind of comment, feedback and/or review would you want to get for this movie of yours? How do you want to be remembered? Would you have made a difference in the world or impacted the lives of the people around you that your movie will be played over and over again to impact more lives, long after you’ve passed on?

Seriously, how would you like to be remembered? How would people describe you and your life? Really, take some time to think about it. How would your “movie” end?

As the famous Dr. Stephen R. Covey put it wisely: “Begin with the end in mind.” And as the saying goes, “If you know how you want to die, you’d know how to live.”

The good news is: you’re still alive and the film is still rolling to capture the rest of your life. In fact, you are the director, producer, main character and scriptwriter of this movie. How will the story go from here?

You take it from here.

Don’t be a “walking dead” who merely exists in this world without a purpose in life. Life—just like any event—has a beginning and an end. What happens in between is up to you to put meaning to it. Give your life one great meaning. What would it mean in the future that you once lived in this world? Are you going to be remembered as a warrior who fights for your own destiny or a weakling who submits to the circumstances in life? You have every right to choose the kind of life you want to live and how it’s going to end. You know you have the unlimited potential to realise your dreams in this life. What’s more urgent is that you get to live this life just once. One life, one chance. All you need to do is to make a DECISION to take control over the rest of the “movie” and start shaping your destiny.

“It is in your moment of decision that your destiny is shaped.”—Anthony Robbins

I wish you true success and freedom; to live life with great dignity and passion.

Be blessed.

Further reading

• How To Have All Your Wishes Come True
• Do Pain And Pleasure Use You?
• Our Time On Earth
• The Magic Of Thinking Big
• Dying Professor’s Last Lecture

Click here to view the embedded video.

Further reading

• Do Pain And Pleasure Use You?
• What I Saw At The Graveyard
• Do You Have The Power To Own Your Own Life?
• How To Have All Your Wishes Come True
• Our Time On Earth