Duh! I wonder if this is your first reaction to the summary of this post. Of course it accumulates. Everything accumulates. Just like a coin, if you found one coin today, and tomorrow you found another one, that will make two coins.

But wait a minute, this post is meant for more than just compounding interest or wealth generation. It is one of the most interesting lesson I’ve learnt the past 2 months.

The story

I was very stressed that day. With all the problem I was having with work, one of my staff was giving me more problem. He did one expensive mistake and I proceeded by calling him up and showed him where he did wrong. Of course as his superior, I had to be slightly tough with him. It was a really serious mistake. He however didn’t take it that well. Instead he just walked out the door without saying a word.

With so many other problems, I chosed to let this one go. I just buried my anger and focused on other things at hand. The keyword here is “buried“.

This is where I make a mistake. It turns out anger accumulates too. That same staff was caught one day trying to steal scrap iron. He was caught red handed with the scrap iron in his motorcycle. Of course he denied putting it there. He even started shouting at other people angrily.

I was there. And even though this kind of things had never bothered me before, I felt an intense anger building up immediately at the staff. There was even one time, I almost slapped him. I’m stressing the word “Almost” here.

Lesson learnt

I suddenly realized. I never slapped anyone my entire life. That incident itself was nothing to be angry about. I could just bring the staff to the police, make a police report and deal with it accordingly. It seemed that the anger I buried was still there. It accumulated every time I got angry and in the end, it exploded.

So guys remember.. your emotion accumulates.

What ever your problem today, do something about it today.

• If you’re angry at someone, forgive him that same day.
• If you miss someone, call her and tell her that.
• If your friend keep telling joke about you and you hate it, show that you hate it.
• If you are stressed with your boss, talk about it with your boss.

- What do you think? -
Do you have any story that describe accumulation of emotion?

—— Personal Note ——–
I actually talked to my superior about the stress I’m having. This is his exact words – “Do you know why you are stressful? It’s because you don’t know how to manage the small things. Bla bla”. I ended up being more stressed.

But deep down, I know that I have attempted to solve my problem. That itself is a very comforting emotion.

Photo Credit – Darkpatator

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The Story

Once there was a school with quite a unique problem. The girls at the school were beginning to use lipstick and like everyone else who just started a thing, there were lipstick prints all over the mirrors of the school bathroom.

This however was a problem to the janitor since he would have to clean the mirror every single day.

One day he reported the problem to the school principal and she immediately called up all the students to the bathroom (of course in groups). She then explained that the lip prints were causing problem to the janitor who worked very hard to keep the school clean.

She even asked the janitor to demonstrate how difficult it was to clean the lips prints. The janitor took out a long handled squeegee, dipped it in the toilet, and cleaned the mirror with it.

Since then, there have been no lip prints on the mirror.

/end story

As you can probably notice, the solution is so simple and effective, it is amazing why we can’t come up with it in the first place.

So how can we come up with an amazingly effective solution to other daily problems in our life?

I don’t know about you, but when dealing with people, I personally believe that any solution can be very effective provided we can tap into the people’s emotion.

Let’s look at the story for example. The janitor use the toilet water to induce the feeling of disgust in the students and in the end, he manage to solve the problem completely.

How I Apply It In Real Life

I’m having the same problem here in my mill. A lot of my workers prefer not to wear the safety helmet during working. Of course they will be wearing them when I’m around but I really don’t think they are wearing it during night time etc.

So what I did is to gather a lot of pictures from the internet on accidents that happened to people who did not wear their safety helmet. There are pictures of dead people with their head slice into two, iron rod penetrating the skull etc. Seriously, they are the kind of pictures you wouldn’t want to show your children or you will have to pay for their therapy for years.

Immediately after I show these pictures, almost everyone wear the safety helmet (day and night). I’m really hoping that the pictures can stir the fear inside the workers. It worked! Problem solved!

- I wonder -
How else can we use emotion to solve problems?

——– Personal Note ———-
You must not confuse this with emotional blackmail. Emotional blackmail is a method used to get what you want but via dirtier means. For example, using guilt to make your relatives become slave of the house or by using jealousy to ruin a marriage etc.

Like all other great tools, in the right hand, it will become a blessing. But in the wrong hand, it will become a disaster.

Photo Credit – Katie Tegtmeyer

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“The newlywed wife said to her husband when he returned from work, “I have great news for you. Pretty soon, we’re going to be three in this house instead of two.”

He was glowing of happiness and kissing his wife when she said, “I’m glad that you feel this way since tomorrow morning, my mother moves in with us.”

/end joke

Happiness is such a wonderful feeling. Out of a sudden, you feel energetic and excited as if nothing else matters in the world. You jump, you cry and you smile. It really is amazing.

However, just like most of other feelings, happiness will deteriorate with time. And the quest to maintain and find happiness is really a challenging task even for the most optimistic person.

Any tricks that you use to find happiness? These are a few of mine.

1) Outsource doing things that you hate

Let say you dislike doing laundry but your spouse is at neutral with that task (means no inclination to both liking and disliking), why not negotiate the task. She will do the laundry while you cook dinner. Provided that you love cooking, both of you will be relatively happier each day.

2) Create a Survivor type happiness booth

Get an A4 paper, and write down all the emotion you can remember. Cut every words and put it into a box. Put the box in front of a mirror and every morning, allocate some time to be in front of the mirror and find the word happiness from the box. Show the word to the mirror and say it out loud why you choose to be happy today.

It can be exactly the same thing everyday, but subconcioiously this will help a lot in your quest to finding happiness everyday.

Whenever you are feeling “not happy”, you will immediately remember that ritual you do every morning, and you will know that that is the chance for you to choose happiness instead of other emotion. It is going to be easier to be happy if we have made that choice everyday conciously. Try it and tell me how it goes.

3) Set up secret journal of happiness

I’m not sure about you, but I always feel happier when I’m thinking about my past happy moments, like the first day I received the news that I’m going to be a father, or the day my daughter was born (Hm weird, it seems like a lot of my happiness recently comes from my daughter).

If you are just like me, I would encourage you to keep a secret journal of happiness. It can be a microsoft word file (password protected of course) with a few line to remind us of the event that make us happy.

Happy moments are like treasure. Treat it like one.

4) Do _____ just for fun

If you think about it, we never really do stuff just for the fun of it. I’m not talking about the things we like to do like football, or blogging etc. These activities usually have other benefits to us that we don’t really have fun while doing it.

Try to do one random things just for the fun of it. Go dancing under the rain, or go camera crazy at the zoo (Try to get every possible pictures you can), or sing a song at a friend’s wedding (make sure you don’t know a single word of that song)

You will be laughed at, that for sure, but you will also have a good laugh after that. And nothing brings out happiness better than a good laugh.

- I wonder -
Any secret tricks that will sure make you happy?

———– Personal Note ————-
A quick flash back to my Journal of Happiness,

Photo Credit – Jaja 1986

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If I ask you “Who is the strongest man on the planet?” I’m quite sure that the name Superman will come up. For those still not sure, Superman is a fictional character from comic books. He was described to be able to lift even a mountain. I’m not sure what good that may do to us. However, there are more than one way to define strength.

There’s a saying that the strongest man is not the person who can lift the heaviest stone, but the person who can control his temper.

Let’s face it, a man with temper is no fun. Most of the time they are plain dangerous to be around with. When asked, almost all of them will say that they just didn’t realize how such emotion build up. It just burst like an active volcano.

Imagine if you can stop an active volcano from erupting. Don’t you think that’s superstrong? Here’s a few tips that may help control one’s temper.

1) Acknowledge that you are angry
As easy as this sound, this is the hardest step of all. However this is also the most efficient way to control your temper. I repeat, it is the MOST EFFICIENT way to control your temper. Once you know that you are angry, you will be more conscious about your reaction and that itself cools you down drastically.

2) Set OK limits
OK limits are actual limits that you set beforehand on when exactly it’s ok to lose your temper. Now you may ask “aren’t we supposed to be controlling the temper, not letting it go?”. Believe me that when you have establish this limits, it will be so much easier to control it.

For example, Let us assume you set the limit as such – “it is ok to lose your temper if somebody is hurting your loved ones”. When you know your limits, you will know that all other incident will not be worth it. Why? because they are not in the OK limit list. Imagine how many time you can avoid losing your temper this way.

It is important to have these limits. Just as it is important to be angry in the right situation. For example, a wife / husband cheating on you. You have every right to be angry. In fact that anger will make it easier for you to take action and move on.

3) Create a mantra
This is my favorite method. Personally, the mantra I always use to control my temper is “Once I spit, I will never lick the spit back”. Roughly translated that whenever I lose my temper I will be responsible to anything that may happen. No regrets or apology.

What’s your mantra?

4) Change position
In Islam, it is proposed that to control one’s temper you should change position. If for example you are standing, consider sitting down. I’m assuming there’s a theory behind it. That whenever we are angry at something, it would be best if we just walk away from being near to the things / person we are angry at.

If you are angry at losing football team, consider walking away to maybe a park or a lake. The farther you are from the match, the more relaxed you will become. How can you cool down when you are still at the match watching your team play horribly.

5) Find a safer way to let it out
In some cases, even after we cool down, the temper is still there inside. It may lessen with time but it’s still there and anything can spark it back to life. You need to get it out of your chest. Talk to your loved ones about it.

How about setting up an email account specifically for you to pour in all your emotion. Write an email of anger to that account and tell yourself he/she is reading it. That should help. I wonder if be.angry.at.me@gmail.com has been taken.

6) Breathe
If all else fail, you can try this – Breathe in and out slowlly. Just focus on your breathing. Close your eyes and feel the air going in and out. There.. you are now meditating

Conclusion – There are a lot of technique out there for anger management. They even set up classes just for this. But I truly believe that these five are the most efficient method of all.

Controlling temper is never easy. Do not expect anything less. That is why when you can control it, you can proudly declare that you are the strongest man / woman in the world

- I wonder -
How do you control your temper?

————- Personal Note ————
I’m sorry for the long absence. Work caught up with me. The thing about my line of work is that, I’m on standby 24/7 minus the overtime pay. Sometime I can get very upset thinking about it. But I have made my peace with it.

How have you guys been?

Photo credit – hypertypos

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The Scenario

Imagine you are in a room. Guess what, there’s a bomb in the room next door and that bomb will only starts to countdown when you enter the room. To make things more interesting, you are a bomb expert, and if anyone can disarm that bomb, it would be you.

What would you do?

The bomb will only tick when someone enters that room. You can be evil by ignoring it, and it’s someone else’s problem. Or you can lock the door to the next room, and finish what ever your business is in this first room (taking your time).

If you choose the latter option, which is taking your time. Will you be worried about the bomb next door? The room is locked, and the bomb is not ticking yet. Why should you be worry?

This is actually the secret to being calm. Which is to live now. Not in the future or in the past, but now.

The Past Person

Some people like to live in the past. They may have done something good, or bad in their past, and they really love to think about that. For example, a man may have received so many rejection from girls that he now doesn’t have any confident to speak to girl. A lot has change to this guy, he may have good job, with good money. His behavior also may have changed to better, but still his mindset is in the past. He still prefer to think about all the rejection he had and thus fail to live in the now.

The Future Person

Another set of people, like to live in the future. They worry too much about their life. What will happen if they didn’t have enough money for retirement? or if there is an accident? Or what if their teenagers rebel and join a cult.

Now this is a tricky one. Don’t stop thinking about the future. But try to differentiate between planning for the future and worrying about the future. Take the retirement issue for example. He can worry all day long, but still he can’t do anything about it. Unless of course he can find an extra one million that day. What he need to do, is to plan how much is enough, and try to work in reverse on how to achieve that amount. As long as he stick to his plan, he shouldn’t be worry at all.

The Now Person

Live in the now. Coming back to the bomb disarmer in the room. What he should do is to take his time, watch some movie, or order some Burger King. Enjoy his “now”. But in the same time, prepare all his tool for the bomb, and maybe brush up his knowledge on the most recent bomb cases. That’s planning.

He should open the door only when he’s ready. And at that time, only focus about disarming the bomb. Nothing else. He shouldn’t be thinking about the movie he just watched or the burger he just ate. Just the bomb.

Don’t you think he is a very calm man?

- I wonder -
Which are you, a past person or a future person?

——— Personal Note ———-
I must admit, I am a past kind of person. I like to linger my mind to the past. My reason is so that I will not forget all the memories since all of them are that precious to me. In my opinion, doing this sometimes is OK. Just don’t let any of the past experience affect you.

Don’t you agree that living in the now is very hard to do?

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In a lecture on stress management, the lecturer picked up a glass of water and asked his student “How much this water weigh?”. One student estimated the weight to be about 500g.

The lecturer then asked “Do you think you can hold the glass of water with your hand stretched?”. The students replied “Easily.”With a smile, the lecturer continues “The truth is, it is really easy to hold that glass of water. But what will happen if you hold that glass for an hour? Your hand will start to feel pain. What will happen after a day of holding the glass of water? you may pass out from the pain.”

“The same goes to stress. Most people can handle their own stress. When you work, you are given a lot of work to do, problem to solve, and other stress. Being your job, you will always be able to handle it.”

“But what will happen if you keep carrying that stress on your shoulder even after work? What will happen if you keep bringing your work and problem home? and what will happen if you sleep every night thinking about your unfinished work?”

“You will collapse eventually”

“So always leave your burden and stress periodically. Leave your work at your workplace. Don’t bring it home. Pick it up tomorrow when you’re there and you can do something about it. You can’t do much about it at home. So why bother. Your stress and burden will then be more bearable and easier to manage.”

So guys.. Enjoy your Sunday

Photo Credit : flickrPrince

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Lucky Draw Update – God’s Slave has increased her chance of winning by posting about the contest in her blog. She received 22 entries.. You can do the same and thus increasing your chance of winning

One summer evening during a violent thunderstorm a mother was tucking her son into bed. She was about to turn off the light when he asked with a tremor in his voice,

“Mommy, will you sleep with me tonight?”

The mother smiled and gave him a reassuring hug. “I can’t dear,” she said. “I have to sleep in Daddy’s room.”

A long silence was broken at last by his shaky little voice: “The big sissy.”

/end

I love the joke. Just love how simple the mind of children can be.

I still remember that there was time when I was still children that I’m terrified of the sound of thunder. And the fact that my parent switched off the television just make it harder to ignore

I’m not sure how, but over time, I seem to lose that fear. It makes me wonder though, how can we overcome our fear?

1) Knowledge
This is what I think destroy my fear entirely. I may have learnt more about lightning and thunder and understand that the sound of thunder is actually just loud noise. No danger there. And that if you can hear the sound, means you are still alive and safe.

When you know how to swim, your fear of water will slowly fade away. It will help if you actually enjoy swimming.

2) Check what starts the fear
Some fear start at the subconscious level. Maybe you are afraid of height because once in your childhood you’ve fallen from a tree. You may not remember the incident, but the fear of height has developed from it.

All you need to do now, is to try to trace back the exact root of your fear. The more we know about it, the more ready we will be to overcome it.

3) Face it one small step at a time
This is one of the most important step in overcoming you fear. We can say we are no longer afraid of spider, but there’s no point when there is one and we just walk away. Face the fear.

Maybe we can try this, find a dead spider first. Take it in our hand and examine it for a while. That shouldn’t be a problem right? Later maybe we can try with live small ones,

The change must be gradual. Don’t overwhelm yourself with Tarantula or Spiderman just yet

4) Get help from friends
There must be at least one friend of yours who doesn’t share the same fear. Get help from them. For example, you are afraid of computers (which is ironic, since you will not be able to read this if you are). Have the friend at your side while you swith one on.

5) Just throw the fear away
What would you do if you are afraid to see blood, but there is an accident happening right in front of you. Do you walk away?

No, you shouldn’t. What you should do (besides calling for ambulance) is to throw that fear away for a while. People may be dying there, and you worry about some blood?

6) Ask – can you die?
Some fear is very ridiculous. Like fear of birds. Just ask yourself, can you actually die if a bird peck you? There’s never an incident recorded from history of people killed by a bird. So why then are we afraid?

This is actually a good mantra to repeat when you are overcoming your fear. “The worst case scenario is I die, and there’s no way I’m going to die from this”

Conclusion – We may be content with our fear, but why living with one? overcome them and be a better you.

- I wonder -
What’s your fear?

———– Personal Note ———–
One of my fear was needle. I’m stressing the word WAS. But one time, I was diagnosed with a dengue fever and admitted to ward. There, they poked me with needles so many times that I lost count. That time on, I am no longer afraid of needle

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Let’s assume you found a wallet. Inside there’s about $1000 and an identity card. You will be able to return the wallet to the owner with the address attached to the identity card.

There’s a catch anyway. You actually knew the owner. The owner is actually one of your sworn nemesis or enemy. He is an actual bad person, always calling you names, and always hurt your feeling by making fun of you.

Will you still return the wallet to your enemy?

The right thing to do is of course to return the wallet to the owner, irregardless of how bad he is. That’s the way we actually have to practice.

When given a choice, always do the right thing and never let emotion cloud your mind.

Today, here in Malaysia, everyone is talking about one thing – The General Election. For those who votes, you will be facing choices, between two or more opposing political parties. What ever your choice will be, please do one thing.

Never let emotion lead your decision. You by now should have your principle on the matter. Follow that principles.

People will always be people. They will annoy other people, and talk behind everyone’s back about other people. Usually on the bad side of things. Why should you let this interfere with your judgment? Discard these gossips and make the right choice based on your principles.

Come to think of it, even though there is no election going on, we should never base our decision on emotion. Don’t you think?

——— Personal Note ———
I will be heading back to Kuala Lumpur immediately after I cast my vote. Tomorrow I will start working and apparently a lot of projects to oversee.

For my Malaysian friends, happy voting!

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Emotion is a very powerful tools given to us. Just look at the previous entry, the emotion is there, we forget about it, it will come to haunt us. Being that powerful, it is only right that we know exactly how to make use of them

These are a list of what I can come up on how to make use of emotion.

1) In love
A guy in love should use that emotion to motivate him to be a better person. If the girl doesn’t like a smoker, he should use that motivation to stop smoking.

He shouldn’t use his love to justify him stalking her, or harassing her.

2) Anger
A foreman of a factory should be easily be angry if someone’s tempering with his machine. If that machine is down, he will have to answer to the manager.

Imagine a foreman who doesn’t care if anyone damaging his machine simply because he doesn’t care

3) Happy
Nothing can go wrong with happiness. And the best way a person can make use of his happiness is to infect another person with it. This is usually done automatically. You see a person laughing out loud, the tendency is you will smile at least

4) Jealousy
A student and his roommate. The roommate is so clever, he’s always praised by lecturers. The student is now jealous of that. He should use that jealousy to strive and work harder, so as to get the same appreciation.

Never, and I mean never.. the student use his jealousy and start sabotaging the clever roommate ~ introduce him to clubbing maybe

5) Sad
A boy is so sad when his grandfather passed away. He is now living with his grandmother. He can cry all his want, but from his sadness, he should be thankful that he still has a grandmother. He will then appreciate her more ~ not hurting her feeling etc.

- I wonder -
What do you think? Can you guys come up with a scenario where we can make use of our other feeling? Maybe like greed, shy, hate, scared etc

———– Personal Note ———–
Emotion really is a funny thing. Sometime you are so in love, then something happen.. and he/she immediately become the one person you hate the most. Sometimes you are so nervous waiting to be interviewed, and when your time comes.. you are so nervous that you become oppositely brave. They ask and you answer… “whatever happen, so be it”

funny right?

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Can I ask? Have you ever had this feeling? You go through your day as normal. You know you are alright emotionally when you woke up this morning, many things happened since then… and suddenly maybe during lunch, you have that feeling that something is wrong. You’re not feeling comfortable as if there’s something offending you or hurt your feeling, Or is it you’ve forgotten something? You are not sure what it is… but something is definitely wrong. You just don’t know what it is.

Familiar? Happens to me all the time… So assuming you are having the same feeling from time to time, what do you do about it? Do you start to panic, or just completely ignore it.

In my case, it happens usually if I do something hurtful to somebody else. For example, if I accidentally hurt somebody else’s feeling. I would feel it right away. And the feeling will not stop unless I confront him/her and apologize or solve the problem with him/her. I guess I just want to live in harmony with everyone

The interesting part is sometimes, at the time I hurt that someone, I don’t feel a thing. Maybe due to the emotion or what. And after some time, I totally forget it. Then the feeling I described earlier came, and I just can’t ignore it, because I know I hurt someone, but I don’t know who. I will then trace back my exact feeling throughout the day. For example, “Was I feeling this way when I’m at work just now?”… I traced it until I reached the part where I hurt that someone just now. I realized immediately because I can sense the my emotional change at the time. Can you follow me up to now? heheh

The keyword here is tracing back our feeling throughout the time (Hm maybe a key”sentence”). Does anyone here ever do that? Please share, because seriously it helped. When we know where our devastation started, we can end it effectively. The problem with the majority of us, is we don’t want to dig deeper into ourselves when it comes to feeling and emotion. Some even think of it as weakness.

Conclusion – You feel something wrong precisely at 5pm… Trace it back, Remember your feeling at 4pm, 3pm, 2pm etc. Once you have identified where the change in the emotion take place, deal with them. If you hurt someone, go see him… and discuss, If you forgot to pray Zohor, go “Qadha”, If you forget to logout of your email… immediately go log it out. Please don’t check the newspaper for the evening movies

- I wonder -
Have you ever have this feeling? And how do you overcome it?

———– Personal Note ———–
I have a confession. I am not very good at being angry at people. I rarely shout or scream at people, even though some of the workers in my mill are really getting on my nerve. I guess, I don’t like the feeling that someone actually hates me.

Not that I never feel angry or suppressing the anger. When it’s needed, I will definitely do what I have to do. There is one quote – “Shouting at people out of anger is like spitting, never lick it back”

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